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sewersaga · 2 years

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THE OBSTACLE OF BRILLIANCE

Indifference has always been a blade at your throat. Or, rather, a dull rod prodding at your back, insistently, urgently, ceaselessly. It wasn’t particularly painful, but enough of anything over time can bruise. Or, alternatively, Nagi Seishiro is unpredictable and a pain in your ass, but you consider pain a necessary evil to existence.

warnings: explicit mentions of suicide and self harm, mentions of unhealthy eating habits, alcohol and drug usage, very mildly suggestive content, mentally ill! reader, reader has a set appearance (sorry), you have a last name

wc: 23.9k

this is the full fic, not the chaptered version

this fic was written by a 17 year old. if that makes you uncomfortable, lock off. there's no adut cotent so don't get mad lol.

BLOG MASTERLIST

PREVIOUS VERSION (i do not recommend, this version is edited/reformatted and updated and i like it a lot better lol

THEME ONE: TENDER LIKE A BRUISE

The first time you put on a pair of ballet shoes, you were 8. A relatively late start for someone who intended to make a career out of it, a fact your mother, with her innate tendency towards cynicism, never let you forget.

Mother. The word makes a warmth both welcome and uncomfortable blossom in your chest, and suddenly you are 13 in front of the mirror in your leotard, tutu, and pointe shoes. You’ve filled out in ways you’ve been told ballerinas shouldn’t, but she still stands behind you, slicking back the flyaways of your bun. At this point you’re too old for your mother to be helping you get ready before performances. You’re also too old to care.

She looks at you with the rare gentleness of jade, a bobby pin dangling from the corner of her mouth. The thought strikes you that it’s not unlike the cigarettes she smokes when things become too much, her head buried in her hands and chestnut hair splayed out over the smooth wood of the dining room table. While she prepares you for your stage debut, you begin to wonder if working with your auburn hair, the last remnant of the man who you’d call your father if you didn’t know better, was painful for her. If it choked her, she said nothing and suffocated in silence.

The last pin was fixed into place, your hair pinned flat to your scalp with a tautness that was sure to give you a headache later. She took your face in her hands with a tenderness that only her hands could replicate. “Make me proud, okay?”

You spent the years after looking for that same touch. Warm and cold hands, soft and rough, male and female. It’s never the same. You shoulder your sins without complaint. It no longer hurts, and all bruises heal eventually.

At 15, your parents are ambitious. You’re already trying to adjust to the social climate of high school and all it entails, your brother getting used to his first years of Uni, yet they’re still dragging you and Masao along to the snobbiest parties in all of Tokyo. It’s embarrassing and it’s demeaning. You’re not sure how they don’t notice that everyone here is making fun of your family. But they continue with their empty flattery and their ass-kissing, convinced that once they become best friends with the Mikages, practical Japanese royalty, everything will fall into place. They’re convinced that they’re doing their job to move your family up in the world, and the final two pieces to the puzzle are you and your brother. Masao, once content to follow along with your parents request, is rapidly slipping, and you’re still too young to follow.

The bathroom you’ve chosen to hide in is quiet, and the bathtub is cold. You relax, sliding against the slick and freshly cleaned porcelain as you rest your head against the wall. The tile smells faintly of bleach, and the smell is comforting for some reason. You spend upwards of an hour there, scrolling through your phone with little threat of interruption due to the ample amount of bathrooms in the Mikage house. You ignore the texts from your parents until you receive a stern message from your mother informing you that the food was being served and that you needed to be downstairs within the next five minutes if you knew what was good for you.

Vaguely threatening message aside, you begin to worry about the wellbeing of your poor older brother, who is currently being forced to rub elbows with Japan’s horribly vapid elite. Moments later, you’re sitting at one of many classy dining tables that looked like it came out of a home design magazine, watching your parents run around refilling the water glasses of the rich and famous like they were the household help. Your brother’s presence next to you feels like a brick wall, and you’re conscious of the way he bristles when your mother accidentally spills some water on a fancy looking woman’s shoe, and you certainly hear the way he audibly groans when she immediately drops to her knees with a cloth napkin to wipe it off.

Rather than cursing your mother out and attacking her for her stupidity and asskissing, the lady waves her off with a grin, and to your and Masao’s surprise, invites your entire family to sit at the table with her. You awkwardly shuffle over, and are pushed down into one of the chairs by your mother’s outwardly gentle touch, though only you can recognize the warning behind it: Don’t fuck this up for us. You take the hint and keep silent. You’re bordered on either side by an empty chair to your right, and Masao to your left, who seems to be on an entirely different plane with his thoughts.

The lady looks at you both with a warm smile that only falters slightly when it falls upon the almost unresponsive form that is your brother. She introduces herself, and your stomach drops (along with a glass that your mother was holding) when she reveals that her name is Mikage Erina.

You swallow your surprise and shake her hand politely, watching your mother die in her own embarrassment behind her. Even Masao unstiffens for long enough to speak his name and take her hand tentatively. She makes polite conversation once both your parents sit down, and even manages to get a few answers out of Masao pertaining to what his goals are and how he feels about his studies.

Your parents are impressed; this is exactly the image they had of Tokyo’s upper class. Dignified, well-mannered, kind, almost a little too interested in what the plebeians like you were up to.

Mikage Erina is beautiful in every sense of the word. She is the embodiment of class and decorum, silky purple hair fixed into a low bun at the nape of her neck, expensive pearls around her neck. She is a woman well taken care of, and it is clear that she prides herself in the appearance that she portrays. Something about her is commanding , and her presence clearly calls attention in every room.

Mikage Erina calls over to a boy and a man who seem to be having a passionate, hushed conversation across the dining room. The boy glares at the man and as he turns to face Erina, you recognize that he is Mikage Reo, the future heir to the Mikage corporation. The other man, who you assume is his father, throws his hands up in frustration as Reo completely disregards whatever he was saying and heads over to where his mother is sitting.

Mikage Reo goes to your school, but you have done a very good job at keeping your distance. God forbid he finds out you’re the daughter of the Setsunos, the family notorious for trying their very hardest to get into the good graces of whomever fortune favors in Tokyo. But now, there's no point in hiding the obvious, so when his mother introduces him, you simply throw him a wave and a small smile.

He returns your greeting with an outstretched hand, and when you take it, he, without an ounce of hesitation, brings your hand to his mouth and kisses it softly. A gentlemanly act, but one that still left you flustered and caused your mother to practically combust. You could physically sense her planning the engagement party and drafting your wedding vows in her head when he finished his little spectacle with, “Pleased to meet you, Setsuno [Name].” You weren’t sure whether you wanted to slam his head into the table, or your own.

After dinner and a lot of pointless bragging from your mother that consisted mostly of lies about the way your family lived, you found yourself wandering around the house, looking for a place of solitude that wasn’t a bathroom (your mother had demanded that you stay in her line of sight.)

You eventually found your way to a balcony where some younger couples were chatting but promptly eyed each other and left when you walked out. It was mid-spring, and a chill hung in the air as you leaned over the glass railing, although the weather was comfortable enough for you to be out there just in your thin long sleeved dress. You looked down at the city below, realizing that this must be the view that those at the top of society wake up to every day. Everyone down below on the street seemed as insignificant as ants, easily stepped upon and crushed beneath the soles of the feet of the kingpins of businesses like the Mikage Corporation. The disparity of it all made something inside you twist, because you were still just fifteen and naive and had yet to find out how unfair the world can be.

“Enjoying the view?” You jumped at the familiarly smooth voice, turning around to see sixteen year old Mikage Reo standing next to you. You weren’t sure when he’d appeared, but you were sure that you were staring cryptically straight down at the streets of Tokyo for at least the past three minutes. He laughed at your lack of response as he followed your gaze downward. “It always looks the best from the top, doesn’t it?”

You scoffed. “I wouldn’t be so quick to agree.”

Reo quirked a short eyebrow. “Is that so?” He’s annoying, and he’s trying to be. He’s the type who’s used to being a magnet for female attention, but he’d rather you hate him than feel any sort of indifference. Unluckily for him, you’re indifferent to most things.

So of course, Mikage Reo would relish in his penthouse view. It’s practically been handed to him on a silver spoon.

Despite it all, your curiosity still slowly builds until finally, you ask: “To start, how do you know when you’ve reached the top?”

The smooth talker is quiet for a moment in response to your question. Only when his strikingly purple gaze meets yours does he reply: “When everyone else is far below you.”

You see Mikage Reo and his friend Nagi Seishiro around school a few times over the next year. Then, one day, they disappear. Something about some “Blue Rock” football project or other.

Whatever it was, you had more important things to worry about. Much more important things. You took his words to heart, cultivating the growing hubris within your chest as your innate talent in ballet became harder to ignore. Everything was crumbling around you, but you shouldered your newfound sin without complaint. All bruises heal eventually.

At 16, your world is upside down. It’s an uncomfortably stuffy summer night and your father is sleeping at his office. Your mother tells you that he has a project to complete, but you are almost grown, and you know better.

For days, she sat on the couch, eyes bloodshot, getting up only to use the bathroom, using you to cater to her every need otherwise. Now, she is sleeping on the sofa under a thin blanket. You return from the kitchen where you had gone to get her a glass of water, and carefully approach the couch.

She looks up at you with tired green eyes as she takes the glass in a shaking hand without thanks. She is quiet as she sips, her far off gaze fixed on the TV, which is playing a rerun of some absurd game show. Her face is entirely unreadable, though you’d never been good at interpreting the language of your mother’s facial expressions. That was always Masao’s job, and you are not at all used to being your mother’s keeper. However, you’re now the closest thing that this household has to a man, and it’s time for you to get your hands a little dirty. Your mother takes a shaky breath. “You know, I never wanted things to turn out this way for you.” She says it so quietly you’re not even sure she’s spoken.

You look back at her, surprised to see a tear breaching the smooth skin of her face. She hasn’t cried at all despite the tax of the last few days, but you were the one who made her break, and you were suddenly consumed by the knowledge that your existence alone may have been too much for her.

Your mother continues to cry silently, but you do not comfort nor console her. Instead, you stand a comfortable distance away from the couch like a specter, her shaking form convulsing in your shadow, and you do not move. Wrath bubbles in your chest, but you shoulder your sin without complaint. All bruises heal eventually, but by now you’ve learned that they scar the skin of others.

THEME TWO: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY!

At 20, ballet is not your life, nor your passion, but more the only thing that you’re relatively good at. Ruining yourself has become old, but you still feel like a little girl living in a dollhouse that an adult has set up for her. Every morning you arrange your toys, you pack your bag, and you go to the studio. You scarcely eat, and seldom sleep, but gluttony and sloth are sins, and you’ve long since purged the sacrilege from your body.

The routine keeps you in check on the hard days, and sometimes the only thing that gets you through rehearsals is the promise of a cigarette. You always walk a few blocks away from the studio– how would it look if one of Tokyo Ballet Company’s most promising dancers was caught indulging in earthly pleasures?-- and sit down on a park bench, or maybe a table at a scarcely populated cafe. You light a cigarette between trembling fingers and feel your nerves calm with each inhale of blueberry smoke, the knots tied up in your chest unraveling within the haze, sinning without complaint.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time, long, long ago, when the dream of becoming a prima ballerina was a far off possibility for you. You’ve found that the more impossible things seem, the more fun it is to work for them. The means never justify the end, and you’re sure you’re the type of person who only deserves semi-fulfilled desires.

But you weren’t one to dwell on the mediocrity of your routine, and thus, you continued. Maturity was something you’d always been told you lacked, and you were sure your brain chemistry had significantly regressed since you were eighteen. Maybe it was the cigarettes, maybe it was the drinking. Either way, you felt flighty and restless constantly in a way that pique turns and tour jetes could certainly not fix.

For three months during your eighteenth year, you sinned beyond comparison. You indulged your every whim, becoming the incarnate of what once was your worst nightmare. Drinking, smoking, whatever hurt the most, whatever made you feel the least. What once was, was no more, and now lower and lower you sank, the vice grip of your own demise at your throat. Everything and everyone bored you, and the warmth of someone beside you in bed provoked nothing. Nothing hurt, and for those three months, you were determined to ravage yourself, to tear open your own chest and eat until there was nothing left. You thought it a divine punishment of sorts.

Three months. That was all it would take to figure out what you wanted to do. Three months to break down and rebuild yourself piece by piece, limb by limb. No ballet, no contact, nothing. You were granted this break because they needed you, and they needed you to get your shit together.

It embarrassed you to think about the kid you once were, determined to ruin your own life in the most unhealthy ways. At least now through ballet you get recognition for it rather than looks of disgust and contempt for being the cause of your own downfall. But by twenty-two, you had decided that you much preferred sore and bleeding feet to puking your guts out with shame every Sunday morning.

It’s the end of rehearsal, and you’re staring at your feet in disgust. You actually put in more work than usual at practice, and it shows in the blisters and bruising on your toes and the sides of your feet. You guessed it was time for new pointe shoes, but you weren’t sure when in your very busy schedule of lying around your apartment watching TV shows on your phone or sleeping you’d find time to go out and get fitted. These would have to do for the moment.

Ballet was tiring, and physically destructive, but maybe that was what you liked about it. You’d come to desire the sensation of building yourself up from nothing and then pushing and pushing to the point of no return. You were your own creator, and you would not allow anyone else to be your downfall. Regardless of your personal thoughts, you always left the studio with sore limbs, messy hair, a scowl, and an irksome restlessness.

The first time you hear the name Nagi Seishiro again is, funnily enough, at the studio. You are tending to the wounds on your feet when you hear a ruckus outside in the lobby. Girlish squeals and giggles blend into each other, and your once-piqued curiosity quickly depletes. You barely raise your head.

The younger girls were known to make a fuss whenever anyone mildly interesting would come in. Once, they harassed a poor flower delivery boy to the point the moment he came in with a huge bouquet that didn’t bear the name of the recipient. They were literally the reason why a certain flower company no longer allowed their couriers to enter the establishment.

The final bandage is applied to your heel when the door flies open, carelessly flung by a red-faced junior corps dancer who you knew as Atsuko. “Setsuno-san, come see! You have to see this!”

You had fully intended on minding your business, but the girl’s excitement enticed you in some odd way. You didn’t have time for boys when you were a teenager, and your mother would have skinned you alive if you ever brought someone home. That is, if she were sober enough to care. Most days, you could’ve walked in banging pots and pans and tap dancing and she’d barely lift her head from her dirty pillow. After a while, it wasn’t something that bothered you anymore, and you hated dwelling. The image of her form curled up on the old and worse for wear couch became a welcome sight. At least she was alive, although not in the ways that counted.

At 16, you were afraid, and not at all rosy-cheeked and curious about the opposite sex. Attraction and success were worldly desires handed to sinners on a gold plate, and apathy proved to be your saving grace. By 17, you had decided that desire was dead and that the gods condemned all sinners. At 20, it’s too late to repent.

She took you by the hand and pulled you to your sore feet, tugging you outside of the room, giggling the whole way. Once you had made it to the lobby, and Atsuko’s chest was heaving from the effort, she pointed excitedly towards the TV, which was now focused on a stern looking newscaster talking about the end of summer’s mosquito population. Atsuko’s face fell into an exaggerated pout. “Oh, man. We missed it.”

You weren’t sure what she meant, and in all honesty, you could not have cared less. There was a nap waiting for you at home, and you would not let hysteria over what you were sure was the equivalent of another decently attractive delivery boy make you late. Atsuko sighed, letting go of your hands. “Sorry, Setsuno-san. I’ll make sure to let you know faster next time!” She was so earnest that it made your head hurt, the sensation similar to the brain freeze that comes from an overly sweet milkshake.

Atsuko and the rest of your juniors were kind, but they weren’t the sort of people you’d usually associate yourself with. In fact, if it were up to you, you wouldn’t associate yourself with anyone. You preferred to spend your breaks and post-practice time decompressing by yourself. Although you didn’t exactly put in so much work at rehearsal, a fact that seemed to astound your more ambitious juniors.

There always seemed to be someone who had it out for you with intentions of taking your place. They were entirely insignificant in your life. Your talents and your style were irreplaceable. You knew it, the company knew it, your peers knew it. You only wished your subordinates would get it through their naive little heads.

That evening, you smoke your last blueberry cigarette, and decide to drop by the convenience store on the corner to pick up some more. You walk in, the bell above the door signifying your arrival, and the cool air welcomes you in. Strolling the aisles, you look for a low calorie snack, eventually giving up and just purchasing two instant ramen bowls.

You ask the cashier if he has any blueberry cigarettes and while he's scouring the wall behind him for them, your attention is drawn to the TV. He has it turned to some sports channel, and footage of a very tense football game is playing on the screen. You know absolutely jack-shit about football, but even you can admit that what you’ve seen is incredibly impressive. The screen then cuts to a post-game interview where an enthusiastic reporter shoves a microphone into a player's face.

At first, he looks vaguely familiar, and you think about where you could recognize him from. Tall, insane case of bedhead, big eyes, weirdly well-built. You’d definitely remember seeing him.

“Nagi Seishiro, tell us your thoughts on your final victory as a part of the Manshine City U-20 team.” Nagi blinks at the camera, and it's then that you remember. Reo’s friend. The always-sleepy one who would just tag along with him every day until they both went to the stupid Blue Lock thing.

The reporter pushed the microphone closer to Nagi— how that was even possible, you didn’t know— and the camera zoomed to focus on him.

“It’s just one of many wins,” he states casually, adjusting the towel lazily draped around his shoulders. In fact, everything about his demeanor seemed haphazard, including the quiet confidence with which he carried himself. “I’m going to continue the streak with the TK team.” He looks directly at the camera. “We won’t lose.”

Your eyes are glued to the screen, and you notice the writing on his jersey. Manshine City sounds familiar. You vaguely remember your father mentioning something about the Mikage boy playing for an English football team with disgusted disbelief in his voice.

You figured he couldn’t fathom why an heir born with a silver-spoon in his mouth would throw it all away for football, of all things. But Reo seemed to be doing well, and was probably making bank at that, because as soon as you remembered his… eccentric career plan, he appeared patting the shoulder of his slightly taller friend.

“Just as greedy as always, Nagi.” Reo laughs, and the camera pans in order to catch the display of sportsmanship between the two. You’re a little endeared to see that the two seem to be just as close as always. Being in such a cutthroat career together is bound to cause strain on any relationship, but pushing through it likely made their friendship stronger.

“You’re one to talk.” Nagi grumbles, and Reo hits his arm lightly. Reo is then asked to comment, and the mic is pushed towards him, but by then, the man behind the counter has found your coveted cigarettes, and you peel your eyes away from the screen, pay, and leave.

When you leave, you’re not thinking of Nagi Seishiro, but how bad it would be if you had a bowl of instant ramen and a cigarette for dinner. The football match is forgotten, as well as the interview, and the hidden egoism with which Nagi Seishiro spoke. You ate your ramen, smoked a cigarette on your little balcony, took a shower AND washed your hair, and went to sleep. You did not feel an ounce of guilt for your forgetfulness, nor for your indulgence.

Only God held the right to judge you, and you had no idea if such a being even existed. If He did, then He certainly did not care one bit for you.

THEME THREE: YOU ARE GOING TO HATE THIS…

You did not think for a moment about Manshine City or Mikage Reo until an email was forwarded to you from your father with an additional message of I expect you to be in attendance in my stead.

You open the link attached to the email, and it's an invitation to none other but Mikage Reo’s house.Please join us at 5pm sharp. And then this Saturday’s date. Tomorrow. You wished the man would have informed you earlier.

If you were less mature and more high-strung, you would run this by your mother first in a futile attempt to save your skin from copious amounts of interaction with rich snobs. However, you know better than anyone that your mother and your father were not on any sort of speaking terms, and that even hearing about that godforsaken man could throw your mother into a fit.

So you swallow your distaste, and begin rummaging through your miniscule closet for dresses appropriate enough for that sort of gathering. It wasn’t as if you cared about the socialite lifestyle. Things like status and trying to get oneself ahead were absolutely useless to you. You believed that success stemmed from natural talent and talent alone. That’s how things have been all of your life. The talented and the smart get ahead, while the weak who can’t catch up are devoured. It’s not predation, but rather, a process of selection.

You finally settle on a powder blue sundress that you’d worn to a gathering this past spring, and you could not give less of a fuck if some of the common partygoers noticed and gossipped about your repeated dress. It looks good on you— although you believe most things do—- and it happened to be a similar shade of blue to the Manshine City jersey.

The next day, you look at yourself in the mirror before you leave. You’re in no hurry to go, and in fact, the clock is ticking dangerously close to the arrival time. You fully intend on leaving your apartment exactly at 5.

Your hair is done in an updo, and a gold necklace dangles from your neck, along with matching earrings. The perfect picture of a debutante. You want to laugh at yourself. Your dress is a bit wrinkled, but you don’t fix it. You don’t even own an iron anyway.

You arrive at the Mikage house for what is, funnily enough, probably the fifth time in your life, with a champagne bottle sent by your father and a small clutch bag. You walk in, and are immediately assaulted by an air of superiority. You almost choke on the miasma, and decide to set the champagne bottle down on one of many fancy round tables with an intricate centerpiece.

The Mikages seem to have gone all out for this little soiree , despite their presumed discontent with the path that their son had chosen. The atmosphere was loud, and you became aware of the haughty chatter around you. You fiddled with your pocketbook while listening in to the conversations of those around you.

Upon hearing a woman with a nasally voice boast about how her son was a well-renowned dog chiropractor, you made the executive decision to pop open the champagne and pour yourself a glass.

“Hey, Setsuno-san!” A familiar voice behind you makes you jump, and you wonder how Mikage Reo always seems to catch you off guard. He eyes your tight hold on your champagne glass as well as the cork between your teeth. “You’re having fun, I see.”

“An absolute blast.” Your response is muffled by the cork in your mouth, and you unceremoniously spit it out onto the table, where it rolls until it hits the fancy centerpiece and then stops.

Reo laughs. “Still the same as always. It’s nice to see a familiar face. That’s part of the reason why I invited you tonight.”

“You invited me? The invitation was addressed to my father.” You took a sip of your champagne, the bubbles tickling your tongue in a pleasant way. It most definitely would not be strong enough to get you through this gathering, much less through a conversation with Mikage Reo, but it did take the edge off the slightest bit.

“Setsuno Hiroto never shows up to things like this. He always sends his wife. But since Setsuno Mari is 8 months pregnant,” He gestures to you, not seeming to notice the way you bristle at the mention of your stepmother. “He has to send his daughter.” You want to reprimand him for his convoluted thought process, but frankly, you don’t have the energy in you.

“Why couldn’t you just invite me directly? Would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.” You take another sip, and he takes an empty glass from where it’s been sitting upside down on the table.

He pours the uncapped champagne, and you watch the way the liquid bubbles and fizzes in his glass. He takes a sip, and smiles. “This is good champagne. Where’d you get it?”

You neglect to answer. He chuckles. “To answer your question, I figured you wouldn’t come if you didn’t think you had any other choice.” Fuck him, he’s right.

You sigh quietly, deciding to save the brainpower you could use arguing with him to get through the rest of this night without stabbing someone with the expensive silverware. And right now, Reo is being dangerously annoying, and you are dangerously close to the steak knives.

Before you can fantasize about killing your old acquaintance any more, a man with dusty red hair is approaching the two of you. “Reo, that couple over there is asking about—” He cuts himself off upon seeing you. “Who’s this?” He pins you with an analyzing gaze, but you don’t move nor react.

“Setsuno [Name.] She’s an old friend of mine.” You audibly scoff at the word friend but if Reo is offended, it doesn’t show on his face.

“Chigiri Hyouma” The man introduces himself.

“My teammate.” Reo explains. He looks at the two of you like he’s expecting you to bust out some business-casual handshake, but nothing happens, and instead the three of you just sit in uncomfortable silence for a moment.

“Setsuno-san brought us this fancy champagne. Wanna try a glass?” Reo holds his glass out to Chigiri, before bringing it back under his own nose, smelling it. You laugh internally, because in the 5 years since you’ve last seen Mikage Reo in the flesh, he’s become the type of person to smell champagne to gauge its quality.

“Smells good,” Chigiri says tentatively. “You sure she didn’t poison it? She seems like the type.” His face is entirely deadpan, he’s serious, and after a moment of silence, during which neither of you react, Reo lets out an awkward laugh.

“You’re funny, Chigiri. She’s not that evil.” Your hand resting on the table inches closer to the neglected steak knife.

Reo pours Chigiri a glass of champagne. He goes to put the cork back in the mouth of the bottle, but Reo stops him with a you might not want to put that back in there and a pointed look towards you.

Chigiri takes a closer look at the cork and visibly balks upon seeing the unmistakable tint of your lipstick around it. You are seriously going to stab Reo.

Chigiri takes the glass from Reo, and Reo, for some stupid reason, proposes a toast.

“What to?” You hear your own voice ask tiredly.

Reo thinks for a moment, and looks to Chigiri for an answer. Something tells you that this is a common occurence. “To new beginnings?” He suggests.

Chigiri snorts. “That’s dumb.” He thinks for a fraction of a minute before smoothly extending his glass towards you and his teammate. “To success.” He says with finality. And you’re glad Chigiri Hyouma corrected Reo, not just because Mikage Reo’s idea was stupid, but because you hate beginnings.

You’re always one to tie up loose ends, but never the one to start something new. Because then you’d have to go through the hassle of finishing it up. Take your “friendship” with Mikage Reo for example, one that you’d been wanting to end for years. Starting things is the easy part. Finishing them is deceptively difficult.

Reo nods. “That’s a good one.” He holds up his glass, leaving you with no choice but to do the same. The rims of the glasses collide with a sharp clink , and you mirror them in taking a graceful sip. They say their goodbyes respectfully, and then leave you and the steak knives to your own devices.

The moment you’re out of their line of sight, you down the rest of your glass like a shot and push the lipstick smudged cork right back into the mouth of the champagne bottle.

After about an hour of hanging around the edges of the gathering like some powder-blue ghost and a considerable amount of champagne, you’re unable to hide the twitch of your fingers as they ache for a cigarette. Your father would surely reprimand you if he caught wind of the fact that you were going outside to smoke a cigarette at the Mikage residence, but you were regrettably tipsy, and did not give a fuck.

You find yourself heading towards the same balcony where you had your first real conversation with Mikage Reo all those years ago. You set your half empty champagne glass on a nearby counter while you root through your pocketbook to find the pack of cigarettes you’ve been looking for.

You fish one out and decide to leave your expensive pocketbook on the counter. It’s nice, but it feels like a betrayal. Plus, at a high-brow event like this, no one would want to steal a clutch from last season anyway. You grab your glass of champagne and enter the balcony.

The sun is just beginning to set, casting a faint blue glow over the city and the heat is subsiding as you lean over the balcony, looking over again at the people below. Five years, and they still look just as small as before.

It’s funny that after all this time, you’re not any closer to them, nor are you any farther above. You don’t want to step on them like people like your father and the Mikages do. They have their own lives, and their own kids, and you’d hate to take someone else’s brother away from them.

Maybe, if someone like you had looked down at the people below them and thought before they stepped, Setsuno Masao would still be alive. It’s just a thought, and it doesn’t provoke much within you. You can’t keep pressing on old bruises forever. You’ll only prolong the ache. You take a drag of your cigarette, and only then do you become conscious of an almost rhythmic tapping sound somewhere behind you.

You turn slowly, holding your open and flickering lighter as your last source of protection before immediately lowering it upon seeing who the source of the sound was. Nagi Seishiro stands, phone inches away from his face, presumably playing some sort of video game that involves mindlessly tapping the screen over and over. He seems entirely engaged, and although he definitely knows you’re out here, he doesn’t seem to notice that you’re staring. You clear your throat and he looks up. His eyes meet yours for a moment before a chime rings out from his phone. “Oh, man. I died.”

How you didn’t notice he was out here is entirely beyond you. Nagi Seishiro seems to treat his own existence as an afterthought, and he immediately starts another round of his game rather than acknowledging you again. For some unspoken reason, this pisses you off. As much as it gets under your skin when people like Reo passive aggressively bother you, being overlooked is ten times worse. Setsuno [Name] is the type of person who grabs attention the moment she walks into a room. Setsuno [Name] is good at everything she does without trying. Setsuno [Name] will not be ignored.

“You’re the guy from Manshine City right? I saw your interview on TV.” You lean back against the railing casually.

He hums in response without looking up. “That’s me.” Your annoyance gradually grows the longer he messes with his phone without speaking to you.

“You’re friends with Reo, right? I’m Setsuno [Name], we might’ve gone to high school together.” You’re desperately trying to keep the conversation afloat in order to garner his interest in you.

“Yeah probably, he’s my teammate.” He answers thoughtlessly, and you want to tear your hair out of your scalp. You don’t understand how one can be so utterly and completely boring.

One last chance. “I saw your last game. That goal you scored was really impressive.” His phone chimes again, and he exhales through his nose. He’s looking at you, and for only the second time during this entirely one-sided “conversation,” he’s making direct eye contact.

“Do you even know anything about football?” You’re entirely caught off guard, and you can’t exactly tell if he meant it to sting or not. Regardless it does, and you fire back.

“Do you?” You’re not sure what you expect his response to be, but it’s certainly not a matter-of-fact “Not really.”

You’re surprised by his candid honesty. He’s lowered his phone, and is examining you, his head tilted slightly. “You look familiar.”

“We went to the same high school, like I said.” You’re not shocked that he’s already forgotten. Nagi Seishiro in all of his lazy glory does not seem like the type to remember information shared with him while he’s doing something he deems more important, like gaming.

He studies you for another moment. You can’t read his expression, but you think that for a moment you may have captured his attention. Until he speaks again. “Nope. Don’t remember you.” And then he starts gaming again. You’re about to shove that stupid phone up his nose when none other than the bastard himself shows up.

“Ah, so you two have met.” Mikage Reo stands in the entrance to the balcony. “Went to get some more of that champagne of yours but the bottle was empty,” His gaze drifts to the half drunk glass balancing on the railing. “Now I see why.” You apologize with a half hearted bow. He dismisses you before turning his attention to his white-haired friend. “Nagi, what the hell are you doing out here?”

The taller man shrugs. “Got too loud in there to focus.” he points to his phone. Reo rolls his eyes, but the action is more playful than one of genuine annoyance.

“Just forget about that for now. Come with me. Mikan has someone she wants to introduce you to.” Mikan. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but Nagi seems to know who she is.

He looks at Reo, then you, then back at Reo. “Nah. I’m talking to Setsuno [Name] right now.” The fact that he remembered your name is a pleasant surprise, but the look that Reo gives you might as well be a sucker punch to your gut. He looks almost angry, as if he wants to blame you for something that you have no knowledge of, but he knows he can’t because it would be unfair to you.

He sighs. “Come on Nagi. It’ll be quick. Promise you’re not missing anything special with her .” And there it is. You haven’t seen him in years, so you’ve forgotten. Mikage Reo is mean. But you vowed long ago not to let trivial things like that bother you anymore.

So instead of smashing the champagne glass over Mikage Reo’s head, you grip the railing of the balcony a bit tighter, your knuckles turning white as Nagi sighs, throwing you a weak wave before following his purple haired friend. You don’t dwell on it. You silently lick your wounds, and immediately light another cigarette.

You leave shortly after the encounter, deciding that you’d had enough partying for the night. It’s late summer, and the night is sweltering hot as you begin your walk to the train station. Your high heels are not comfortable, but your feet are practically numb after an entire night spent in the things. Plus, if you can handle pointe shoes, your ankles are practically invincible. By the time you get home, the chirp of the cicadas has reached a deafening roar and there are bruises on your heels. You quickly slap some bandaids onto the tender skin before shooting off an email to your father informing him that you did, in fact, attend the Mikage party. The discomfort from the night lingers, and you sleep with your window open, and your pillow pressed over your ears to drown out the omniscient voice.

THEME FOUR: THE SEVEN-SECOND SHOT CLOCK

Some time after you’ve met Nagi Seishiro, there is a miniature cactus at your apartment door. You don’t know what to do with it, and you are thoroughly confused. There’s a small card attached to the pot, and you carefully avoid the spikes in order to open it. A small token of my appreciation for your attendance in my stead at the Mikage social, from your Father. You audibly laugh.

Your father had been known for rewarding you for attending social events in his place, but those were always more along the lines of fancy shoes and clothes. Not a fucking cactus. Although, you did remember that Setsuno Hiroto had recently been on a plant growing kick, specifically cacti and bonsai.

It all started when his new wife brought her bonsai when she moved in and taught him how to trim it. From there, his obsession just escalated until his office was practically filled to the brim with little plants.

You did your research, and sure enough, your show-off of a father had bought you one of the most expensive types of cactus. Admittedly, you did not know the first thing about caring for the thing, but another quick Google search revealed, to your relief, that they were incredibly low maintenance. You watered the plant, found the address for the nearest exotic plant store to you, and made a note to go the next morning before falling asleep with your laptop still open.

The store a few blocks from your house is crowded to say the least. Not by people, obviously. There isn’t exactly a huge demand for rare plants, but the shelves and tables and floors are practically overflowing with the world’s most elusive flora. The owner is an endearingly passionate old man who walks with a slight wobble. He leads you to the back of the store so he can get a better look at your new companion.

He slides on a pair of smudged glasses, and flicks on a little lamp, holding the cactus closer to it. “Yup, sure looks like a copiapoa cinerea to me. Where did you get your hands on one of these?” He’s looking at the plant with awe, and it’s almost comical how invested this man is in cacti, of all things.

“It was a gift.” He carefully passes the cactus back to you, exaggeratingly flinching when you almost drop the pot.

“Careful, there. What else brings you in here? These days an internet search could’ve told you that.” He takes his glasses off, wiping them on the apron you’ve just noticed he’s wearing.

“I read on the internet that I should get cactus feed for it? I dunno, I just figured if it’s so expensive I should try to take proper care of it.” You figure he is silently making fun of your incompetence. But the cactus’s arrival had been entirely unprecedented, and as much as you hated going out of your way to do things, killing an innocent plant was not on your to-do list for the week.

Instead of ridiculing you, the man’s wrinkled face splits into a smile, and he nods. “Of course! You came to the right place.” He starts towards the front of the store with much more energy than someone his age should have. “It makes me so happy when new cactus owners are ready to learn how to care for their new friend.”

This man definitely has a weird relationship with plants. You stand awkwardly in front of the counter as he rummages through one of the only empty shelves, all the while rambling about the ideal living conditions for a cactus.

The entry bell rings, but he doesn’t notice, and you don’t turn around, trying to catch at least a few words of his spiel. “Yo, Miura.” The man pops his head up with a small eh. His face lights up immediately.

“Seishiro!” You turn around, and sure enough, there is Nagi Seishiro, in the flesh. “Seishiro, what a nice surprise!” The man hurriedly comes out from behind the counter, and you by now know that he is the easily excitable type. “Come, look at these new cacti that we just got in.”

Nagi allows himself to be whisked away, and now you are thoroughly confused as to what this football player is doing at an exotic plants store. Is he stalking you? A possibility. But, the owner seemed to know him, so if anything, you were the one who seemed like the stalker.

You awkwardly followed the two of them, staying back a comfortable distance while Miura talked Nagi’s ear off. The two of them together were such a contrast, the overly energetic old man somehow befriending the entirely stoic footballer. You wonder if Miura even knows of Nagi’s notoriety, or just assumes he’s a normal young man with an interest in cacti. You clear your throat in order to claim the old man’s attention, and he immediately stops talking and snaps his gaze to you.

“Oh. You’re still here. What was it that you needed again?” You’re stupidly offended. He turns to Nagi. “This nice young lady came in here with a copiapoa cinerea. A copiapoa cinerea! Can you believe that?”

Nagi looks at you, a hint of awe on his face. “Where’d you get one of those, Setsuno?”

The old man steps back in exaggerated shock, looking back and forth between the two of you. “You know her, Seishiro?”

“Yeah, we went to high school together,” he responds. You furrow your brows in confusion, as you didn’t even think he remembered, especially due to his preoccupation during the conversation in which you’d reminded him. But now he was telling that to this cacti-obsessed old man like the two of you were old chums. You were slightly annoyed, but didn’t have the energy to make a scene in front of Miura.

You looked back at the old man, who now had an almost creepy sort of smirk that told you that he had gotten the complete wrong idea about the two of you. “Oh, I see. High school friends, you say.” He chuckled deviously, and you wanted to get the fuck out of the store as soon as possible. Nagi Seishiro, ever-oblivious, simply nodded, and Miura let out another creepy laugh.

“Alright Setsuno-san, I’ll get your cactus feed, leave the two of you to it.” Miura chuckled to himself yet again, before heading back behind the counter to do as he said. Now you were utterly embarrassed, but if Nagi noticed your state of fluster— which you sincerely doubted, he didn’t say a word.

“What are you doing here, Nagi Seishiro?” He tilts his head in confusion. “Tell me.”

He gestures to the man behind the counter, who is now pretending like he isn’t listening to your conversation and giggling. “I came to get some cactus feed for Choki.”

“Who the fuck is Choki?” You ask. A sister, a cousin? Or maybe even a girlfriend with an interest in cacti. If today has proven anything to you, you can either know nothing about cacti, or you can be entirely obsessed with them. Nagi does not seem like the obsessed type, so it has to be someone close to him, weird name aside.

“My cactus.” His cactus. Nagi Seishiro is the type to not only own a cactus, but to name it?

You let out an incredulous breath. “Okay.” There is literally nothing else you can respond to that with.

Upon sensing the awkwardness of the interaction, Miura conveniently pops back up with two bottles of cactus feed and a cacti care manual. He hands one to Nagi, and gives you the other and the book. “There you go,” You move to pay for it, but he waves you off. “Consider it a first time owner discount.”

You thank him, you wave goodbye a little hesitantly. You and Nagi Seishiro leave at the same time.

“He’s… an interesting one.” You comment once the door has shut behind you. It’s windy outside, and your skirt is blowing in the sort of way that makes you glad you have tights and a sweater on as well as your leotard.

Nagi grunts in agreement. “Which way are you headed?” You look at him to be sure he’s really asked you that question. He has, but he’s typing on his phone as if he didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to rehearsal.” You respond, a bit warily.

He lets out a small hmm before showing you a map route on his phone. “Is it this way?”

You scroll through the path, before nodding. “Yeah. What, are you stalking me?”

He turns his phone back around, confirming the route before he starts to walk. You follow. “Nah. I’m just supposed to meet Reo and Chigiri at some restaurant this way.” You try your best to catch up with him, but Nagi Seishiro has long legs and a lazy but fast gait.

He turns his phone to landscape mode. You can’t tell if this idiot is really gaming in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, but you hope for the sake of your sanity and his safety that he is not.

He continues to tap at his screen, and you realize you’re not going to get any more answers out of him. You’re entirely frustrated, and you feel like a child who’s been denied. And you really fucking wish he would slow down. The two of you are getting weird looks from those who recognize him and those who don’t who just see a tall man with messy white hair absolutely zooming through the sidewalk all while keeping his gaze glued to his cell phone.

It’s annoying, and the tiniest bit endearing, but you’ve been told you’re all legs and you’re determined to keep up with the largest strides you can muster whilst still maintaining your grace. And the man is confusing. You have no idea the intention behind any of his actions, and now he’s practically walking you to the studio all while staying a generous few paces in front of you.

“I don’t get it. Why do you keep showing up everywhere?” You want answers from him, because coincidence is not so cruel.

“I was wondering the same thing. But then I stopped. It doesn’t really matter.” He doesn’t turn around to look at you, but his pace slows, whether consciously or not. You manage to catch up as he stops at a crosswalk. The timer counts down, and you can’t help but feel pressured to get out exactly what you have to say beneath the dictation of the pixelated numbers.

“Why are you walking with me, then?” He must lose the round, or die— you’re not entirely sure what type of game he’s playing—- because he sighs and shuts off his phone before looking at you.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. It’s too much of a pain to answer.” He shuts his eyes for slightly longer than a blink. The breeze continues to blow, ruffling his white hair and making it somehow messier than usual. Six seconds left on the clock. You make your shot.

“Try your best.” You need to know his thought process, and you want him to be glaringly straight forward, which, considering what you know about him, shouldn’t be hard.

“You seem interesting. Reo said talking to you would be a pain. It’s not.” You were right. Nagi Seishiro is blunt without consequence, and you are the grateful listener. You’re quiet, and a few feet away a little boy is tugging on his mother’s arm and pointing to Nagi. He doesn’t spare him a glance before continuing. “The people he makes me talk to are more bothersome than you.” The timer ends. The green pedestrian signal flashes, but neither of you move.

“You don’t know anything about me.” You don’t intend it to be mean, nor to make yourself come off as some enigmatic archetype. It just is. No one knows a thing about who you really are, not your parents, nor your juniors, nor Mikage Reo and his yuppie friends. The only person who did is gone, and has been for long enough that it’s as if he never existed. At least, it’s easier to pretend as much.

He shrugs. “What if I want to?” There’s no further intention behind his words. The one good thing about Nagi Seishiro is that he’s straightforward. You’re interesting to him. Very few things provoke his interest, and he’s found that it’s best to pursue the minimal exceptions. You’re one of them.

“That wouldn’t be a bother?” You start to cross the road, testing him. He follows. He passes.

He starts to look at his phone again and you want to strangle him. “I didn’t think so at first, but all these questions are starting to be.” His facial expression is a shadow of a pout. “Damn. My phone died.” He taps at the screen uselessly.

“I have a portable charger.” You have never seen his face light up as much as it did when he heard your words. The swiftness of the shift was almost scary.

“You do? Can I use it?” You’re suddenly struck with the urge to make him work for it. You don’t say a word until the both of you have reached the other side of the crosswalk, the shot clock far behind you. You’re in an extended time, and now you recognize your upper hand.

“You can, under one condition.” Large gray eyes blink at you once, twice. “I want complete honesty from you from now on. Not just doing shit without explaining to me why.”

He stares at you for a second, his face entirely blank. You’re pretty sure he wants that charger enough to agree to whatever you say, but you could’ve entirely misread him. Your main gripe with him is his unreadability, and you’re hoping that if he agrees to this, that little problem can be solved.

“Fine.” You’re not surprised. You reach into your bag, and you hand him the coveted charger. He plugs it in unceremoniously, and thanks you. It feels like a peace offering of sorts, because now you don’t have to see him and be struck by the awkwardness of his proximity to Mikage Reo, someone who was clearly only pretending to tolerate you for the sake of appearances. But regardless, it’s an offering all the same. “Aren’t you going to be late for your practice?”

You laugh, a little airily and through your nose. “Typically with ballet it’s called rehearsal. And no. And even if I was, it wouldn’t matter,” You continue ahead of him, gracefully, and you carry yourself with an air of poise, one that clearly doesn’t come from a copious amount of social gatherings with the elite. “The others need the extra time to catch up to me anyways.”

Whenever words like that come out of your mouth, it never strikes you as selfish, no matter how the listener may perceive it. To you, it’s a universal truth. You are intrinsically talented, and for the most part, the others are not. It’s not your fault, nor theirs. It just is.

But Nagi doesn’t question nor scold you like others in the past. “Alright. We should get going then. Don’t want you to be late, and Reo will yell at me if I am too.” He continues walking, looking over his shoulder to see if you follow. Is he testing you? You’re determined to pass regardless. You catch up.

You make it to the studio. He ignores the peanut gallery in the lobby and the chaos he leaves in his wake. You assume he makes it to the restaurant without fanfare. The next time you see him at Miura’s, he gives back the portable charger, and he makes the same excuse to head in the same direction as you. You’re not sure how many times his teammates want to meet up with him, but you give him the benefit of the doubt.

The time after that, he does not make an excuse. He tells you that he wants to walk you to your rehearsal, mostly to see if you had anything interesting to say. You did, and you walk.

The fourth time, Miura has begun to catch on. You ignore his snickering and awfully timed innuendos and declare his shop your informal meeting place before your rehearsals.

The fifth time, you stop at a cafe on the way there. He pays for your drink without being asked, and you don’t feel the need to ask him why. You’re afraid that if he answers, the novelty of whatever this is will fade away.

The sixth time, he tells you that he told Reo that the two of you have been seeing each other more often. He tells you that Reo simply shook his head and wished him good luck. Instead of being hurt, you laugh.You don’t know what kind of fucking person you’re becoming. You feel like a doormat, but you don’t entirely hate it at all.

The final time that you still consider your time with him an anomaly, he does not walk you to the studio. You told him the sixth time that you had a meeting with a director to discuss your progress with the company, and you would not be showing up to Miura’s. That’s fine , he told you, and you could sense a but , an additional hasty postscript of information. He said nothing. After practice, he is in the lobby waiting for you. He didn’t want you to walk both ways alone, he said. That made seven.

Seven times make a habit, twenty-one break it. Your mother used to tell you that whenever she got on one of her healthy lifestyle kicks. They’d never last long, and they’d always end with her blackout drunk on the couch, watching shitty sitcoms with her eyes glazed over, ashes from the tip of the cigarette between her fingers threatening to burn the house down. She’d never make it past fifteen without, but she could climb up to seven nights absolutely wasted like she didn’t have another child to take care of. After a while, you realized that in her mind, she didn’t.

You hated thinking of your mother, and you hated that in this instance, Nagi Seishiro had made you think of her. Because the one thing that you consistently liked about his presence was that he annoyed you so much you couldn’t think of anything else.

Whether he was mindlessly gaming, or complaining about something being a pain, or being so obliviously sweet, he found some way to unknowingly push your buttons. And you liked it. You liked it when he made you take the long way to the studio to stop at some arcade. You liked it when you switched perfumes and he offhandedly told you how nice you smelled. You liked it when he paid for everything the two of you bought on your walks without a second thought because two checks would be a pain. You even liked when you’d go to fucking Miura’s and he’d tease you about the extended time the two of you spent together.

You liked him, and that terrified and exhilarated you.

Nagi Seishiro had comfortably settled into your mind in a way that was abhorrently pleasant to you. You lookedforward to seeing him. You stopped slacking off at rehearsal so you wouldn’t have to stay for additional practice. Your feet hurt like never before, but Nagi would take you for a coffee at the nearby cafe, and he’d show you the new game that he was playing, and suddenly nothing mattered any more. He’d invited you into his simple little life free of bothers, and it was the biggest breath of fresh air that you’d ever taken into your admittedly blackened lungs.

You learned early on that in your life, nothing gold could stay. But you want to hold on to this man for just a little bit longer, just long enough to convince you that maybe you do deserve something good. You know better than anyone that it’s not true, that gold rusts and tarnishes and whatever the fuck this is will certainly fade with time. But for now, it is radiant, it is precious, and it is real.

He sits across from you at the cafe, and you try his drink. It’s an incredibly sweet vanilla bean concoction, with no caffeine, despite how much the man needs a pick-me up. You swallow and wince at the sugar content and at the stain that your lipstick has left on his straw. He looks at it, but instead of making some sort of wise remark, he simply wipes it off gently with a napkin, before taking another sip like it's the most normal thing in the world.

You feel normal with him. It won’t last. In the back of your mind, the shot clock ticks away. You stop licking your wounds, and they begin to fester. Infection sets in, and the maggots will be here soon. But for seven seconds, you forget about your bruises, and allow them to heal.

THEME FIVE: THE CARRION OF MURDERED PREY

With the fall comes your new routine, a comfort in a world that doesn’t make sense. For years, being alone was your solace. Not giving anything your time was the only thing that kept you sane. But now, there’s this thing in your life that you can no longer ignore, this person that you care about so much that it makes you physically ill. Whenever you walk next to him, it doesn’t feel real. You seriously consider asking him to pinch you.

He is walking you back from practice when he gets a text. It’s not necessarily anything momentous, but he slows a bit to read it, and you follow suit, concerned. “Everything ok?”

“Yeah. Just have a stop to make on our way back.” He speeds up again, and you get the sense that you’re not supposed to ask any questions. However, you reserve the right to be as annoying as you want, and you tug on the sleeve of his hoodie like a child.

“And where is that?” He hums in response before showing you his phone screen.

“Some cafe Reo and Chigiri are at. They say it has internet, so I don’t have to use data for this game.” You roll your eyes harmlessly. Those two definitely knew how to lure in Nagi Seishiro. You weren’t exactly worried until the realization hit you that Nagi expected you to come along to this cafe, which would entail seeing Mikage Reo again.

In all honesty, you hadn’t thought about the man and your misconduct at his house in a little while. Another plus about Nagi Seishiro’s presence is that despite being his best friend, he hardly mentioned Mikage Reo, and you had less reason to call the man’s presence to mind. It was a nice relief. But in order to stay in Nagi’s presence this afternoon, you’d have to interact with him. Your anxiety mounted as you neared the cafe, and you became aware of the fact that you were still pretty much just wearing your practice gear with a thin sweater and skirt overtop your leotard and tights. You made a mental note to begin packing a change of clothes in your dance bag.

The two of you approach the cafe as the sun is just beginning to set. “I’ll just say hi.” You don’t miss the nerves that are present at the corners of your voice, but you hope Nagi does. You definitely didn’t leave the best impression on the redhead Chigiri, and you’re sure Reo doesn’t really think very highly of you either. You’re not stupid enough to think that a second interaction can remedy a botched first impression.

“Nah, you should stay for a bit,” Nagi pushes. Clearly he doesn’t notice your unease. Nagi’s arm brushes yours as you approach the group of men already sitting in the outdoor seating cafe. You desperately want a cigarette, but you attempt to calm your twitching fingers by fiddling with the hem of your sweater. Your nervous tic will likely expose your embarrassment, but any woman in your situation would want to die just as much, and you don’t think you can sit still whilst facing the metaphorical firing squad.

“I don’t have any money.” It’s a complete and total lie. Your wallet is in your dance bag. You’re not sure if Nagi knows this, but he doesn’t call you out on it. When he offers, you try to convince him it would be too much of a bother for him to pay for you, but he quickly shuts you down, casually mentioning that he makes too much money from football to know what to do with it so it doesn’t matter. You’d make fun of him for his unintentional bragging if you trusted your voice not to come out shaky, and you’re struck with the immediate urge to curl up on the ground in the fetal position. Making a scene is what you do best, after all.

Reo and Chigiri immediately stop talking when the two of you approach, and any hopes you had for shifting their impression of you to a positive one are dashed. It brings you an odd sort of relief akin to the kind that comes from the knowledge that beating a dead horse achieves nothing.

There’s a third man at the table who you don’t recognize. He’s tall with a bad spray tan and an interesting hairstyle that seems to incorporate antennae. His appearance hurts your eyes. You really need a fucking cigarette.

Reo jumps up, clapping Nagi on the back by way of greeting. “Nagi, you’re finally here!” He gives you a tight smile. “And you brought a friend.”

You wave awkwardly. “Hi.”

You turn to Chigiri. “We met at the TK launch.” He has a weird look on his face, but he nods.

You don’t miss the confused glance that he throws Reo, nor the way his eyes dart between you and Nagi and then to the miniscule amount of space between the two of you, and the way you’re practically pressed against the taller man. “Yeah, I remember.”

You ignore the third man. He looks you up and down with a sneer. You know his type, and you don’t have the time nor the energy to deal with him, and something tells you it wouldn’t be entirely unlike dogsitting a pitbull.

Reo pulls Nagi aside when he thinks you aren’t looking. The unease within you begins to mount as the two begin speaking in hushed voices, and Nagi is clearly thoroughly confused. You have no clue what they’re talking about, but as long as you have nothing to do with it, you don’t care to find out. Unfortunately, this forces you to make uncomfortable small talk with Chigiri and Antennae.

Antennae starts in on you almost immediately, stalking you like a cheetah. “Never seen you before.”

You cross your arms across your chest. You have a bad habit of becoming immediately defensive with men like him. Twenty-one times to break a habit. You don’t start now.

He quickly notices that you’re already on the defensive and presses his advantage, deciding to add insult to injury. “What, are you a fan? Did ya follow him here or something?”

You scoff incredulously. You’re used to being undervalued. For a woman with a career like yours, 90% of your life was underestimation. But being deemed a stalker fan was the greatest insult to your character of all time.

“Setsuno [Name]. Haven’t seen you before either, Antennae.” He barks out a laugh at the nickname. Chigiri’s red eyes dart warily between the two of you, determined to stop a fight if the need arises. Physically, you have zero chance against Antennae. But verbally, you’ve been known to hold your own.

“Damn. Think you’re funny, don’t you, orange hair?” Antennae practically snarls at you. It’s still clear that he’s enjoying himself. He’s the type of guy who eats, sleeps, and breathes conflict, and the last thing you want is to give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of you. However much of a doormat you’ve become, you refuse to take this shit from a literal stranger while lying down with your soft underbelly exposed.

“Shidou, don’t be an ass.” Chigiri cuts in. Shidou’ s fist immediately sails towards his face in a seemingly instinctive attempt to punch him, but Chigiri catches the man’s wrist before he can hit his face. The redhead slams Shidou’s fist against the table unceremoniously, and Shidou laughs at the prospect of competition. “Almost forgot how strong you are, princess.”

Chigiri sighs, deeply exasperated with babysitting Shidou. “Don’t call me that.”

“For the record, Nagi told me to come with him.” Both men look at you with a confused huh.

Chigiri lets go of Shidou’s wrist. “What do you mean?” You’re struck with the immediate urge to back down. You want to run away with your tail between your legs, and you can’t shake the feeling that you’ve fucked up something you have absolutely zero knowledge of. Something tells you that would be worse than consciously screwing yourself over.

You continue, facing your fear. “He stopped by on his way here to walk me from rehearsal. He was coming here anyway, so I offered to drop him off.” The two exchange a look as if they hadn’t gone toe-to-toe moments before. You’re thoroughly confused. Shidou raises an eyebrow before leaning back in his chair, sitting all but gentlemanly.

“What, isn’t that other girl coming for him?” Shidou opens his big fat fucking mouth. Chigiri glares at him with a sharp hiss of Shidou, before his gaze meets yours with an emotion you can’t decipher.

“Other girl?” You ask. You’ve never heard Nagi mention any other girl before. The man talks more about his cactus than any other girl. To your own chagrin, you discover a low burning jealousy beginning to rise in your gut. You’re embarrassed, but what else are you supposed to feel? You drop your defensive stance and go on the prowl. You approach Shidou, placing your arms on the table and leaning over him. “Who is that?”

Chigiri is pinching the bridge of his nose. Reo and Nagi’s conversation is now over, and they’ve been listening with bated breath since the moment Chigiri caught Shidou’s fist.

Shidou shrugs, “Honestly, I dunno. Reo said some short girl was coming with Nagi today. Thought you were her.” You look over at Reo. He meets your gaze, his expression caught between pity and something else that you can’t identify.

You stand at the table, ridiculously attempting with your stance to cage a man like Shidou while everyone stares at you. It’s embarrassing, and it’s demeaning, and you don’t like that Reo and Chigiri are looking at you with pity in their eyes. You recognize immediately from countless years of awkward social situations with the rich and famous that you are entirely out of your league here.

This entire time, you’ve been unknowingly encroaching on an already planned out life for Nagi. You glance at him, and for once he’s not on his phone. He’s looking at you. Reo follows your gaze and something seems to click for him. “[Name]-” he starts. His face is pained, as if he actually feels bad. You know he doesn’t. He planned this. He wanted you to hurt as some kind of cruel revenge for attempting to bring down his friend’s social status. And fuck him, it had worked.

You walk away as Shidou is already going off on some how was I supposed to know not to tell her? You don’t want to cry. You want to scream at yourself for ever thinking that famous footballer and best friend of Mikage Reo would ever go for someone like you . He’s unapproachable, sleepy, and entirely unreadable, but he’s famous, and he’s talented, and he’s a genius. You’re a ballerina with a gifted kid complex who consistently skips practice. The entire company agrees that at this point, you’ll amount to nothing. Nagi Seishiro, one of Japan’s most eligible bachelors—if he cared enough to date— and Setsuno [Name], a no-name former prodigy ballerina who is not even close to being worth her salt.

You wonder, briefly, if this is how Masao felt before completely letting himself slip. You shake the thought away. You promised yourself you wouldn’t be like him, no matter how hard things got. You draw your battle lines in the sand, and this time, Nagi Seishiro stands on the other side, right next to Mikage Reo. There’s no time to lick your wounds. You head home.

Two new texts from Reo. I’m sorry. Shidou’s an idiot. I seriously didn’t know you felt that way about Nagi. The second bubble: I want him to look at the other possibilities before he chooses someone. The other possibilities.

You know that there’s an unwritten better before possibilities. After he sees you’ve read the first two, a third text comes through. You get it, right? You don’t. It’s stupid, and its pointless. No matter how much you tell yourself that, for the first time you cannot convince yourself not to care.

You throw your phone across the room. It falls with a thud, hitting the wall before clattering to the floor. You shove your head under a pillow. Your phone buzzes again, but you can’t be bothered to respond. You’ll be awake and done with your little temper tantrum in time for practice tomorrow, but for now, you just want to sleep.

The next day at rehearsal, you are distracted. One, two. You cling to the barre. Three, four. You approached the shut door. Five, six. Sous-sus, passe. Seven, eight. You turned the knob. An acrid, coppery smell filled your nostrils. And again, one, two. Hold. Your balance wobbles. Three, four. You walked toward the bathtub while holding your breath. Five, six. Your sweaty hold on the barre loosens. Seven, eight. The tub was full, and he was already gone. There is no recount. You fall, and the show is over.

You’re sitting in the sterile white infirmary holding an ice pack to your twisted ankle. The almost-institutional feel of the room reminds you of doctor’s visits when you were younger, how you’d press your chubby face against the glass of the colorful fish tank that your pediatrician kept in the waiting room. You look at the seat next to you, almost expecting your mother to appear out of thin air, bored and fiddling with the zipper of her designer purse. But there is no one there, and you are alone with your thoughts.

The nurse has long gone, leaving you with the ice pack and a paper towel that you were instructed to press against the affected area and a warning to “take it easy from now on.” Taking it easy was really all you did, so her guidance didn’t phase you in the slightest. You were the slightest bit embarrassed that you’d twisted your ankle doing something as simple as a passe hold, but the nurse hadn’t at all asked what you did to injure yourself, something that provoked relief. You hadn’t exactly expected the company to provide you with a professional, but a part of you had envisioned being examined by some cynical medic, one who told you exactly what you needed to hear, and not just about your injury. Or maybe, someone not too long ago had just raised your expectations a bit too high on what to hope for from those of the profession.

Asagiri Karin was not especially remarkable, but something about her stuck with you. Asagiri Karin seemed like she was always holding her breath, biting her tongue. It seemed that Asagiri Karin was at war when you’d met her, but you were so far up your own ass to notice. Some days, you dwelled upon what you would’ve said to her if you hadn’t been self-centered, and vapid, a shell filled between the ears with smoke and delusions of grandeur. If you met her again, you’d tell her that hurt runs deep, and peace can only be kept for so long. You’d tell her that waiting with bated breath gets you nowhere.

In your head, you stand facing Asagiri Karin. Whatever material she’s made of is now a part of you, and nothing is the same. Your skin has always been tender, and Asagiri Karin left a handprint shaped bruise. You find it funny that you still think so deeply about how you’d respond differently to someone you met once years ago. You’re different now, and you hope she is as well. The lines are redrawn. Nothing really matters. Your ankle throbs, and you stand up to leave, more wounded than before.

THEME SIX: CALL IT FATE, CALL IT KARMA

Despite your injury, you do not go home. Going home would mean more time alone, and more time alone would give you more time to think about the events of the past week. You figure you need more time alone to think like you need a bullet through the back of your head. Your ankle is numb enough that if you dance in your soft shoes, you could continue to practice without aggravating your injury further, so you switch shoes, and ruin yourself without complaint.

You are not planning to leave early that evening. You are planning to work yourself down to the bone to have the satisfaction of saying you did so. There is nothing more in your life right now other than ballet. You have no other chances at getting somewhere, anywhere.

You keep dancing. Your ankle is fine, you just had to work it off. You tell yourself lie after lie. Your lucidity deteriorates with each fib, and you are too destroyed by your own hand to care. You tell yourself it is all your doing, because admitting that he had affected you, gotten underneath your skin in that annoyingly oblivious way of his would mean that your policy of indifference had gotten you nowhere.

You enter the lobby just as he arrives. You don’t know what his plan was. He seemed not to have one, looking dazedly around the lobby until his eyes fell on you , an unrecognizable emotion blossoming behind them as he approached you. “Setsuno.” It’s the absolute last thing you expected to happen today, a figment from a far off daydream in which you finally got the chance to tell the man how you felt, not unlike a ragdoll being dragged around by its owner under the promise of eventual love and affection.

“Hi.” You stay still. He stops a foot away from you, as if he’s afraid to set something off within you if he encroaches within a certain radius of your presence. If he’s of that opinion, he isn’t entirely wrong, as something is already beginning to bubble within your chest that will reach your mouth before stopping to confer with your brain if he is not careful. You’re reckless when you’re hurt, and Nagi Seishiro holds the potential to bruise. “What are you doing here?”

“Haven’t seen you in a while.” He leaves it at that. In the time that you have known him, Nagi has always been wonderfully terse. It never bothered you before, but this time, you need him to say more, need to hear him dismissing you from his own mouth. The desire is utterly masochistic, yet your reasoning behind it is one of the most selfish things you’ve ever felt, ironically coming from the self-proclaimed prodigy. You want more from him. The silence is heavy, and you’re wrecked. The fact that you want to be with him hits you like a freight train.

The wanting is what ruins you. The desire for something more makes you feel like your skin has been torn off and what lies underneath has been exposed for everyone to see. You feel like a disgusting mockery of a woman. To feel is abhorrent. To want is repulsive. Sometimes he looks at you like you are absolutely transparent and you cannot handle the sensation of being scrutinized any longer. You want to tell him the truth so whatever deluded idea he has about your nature can be shaken out of his thick skull. You want to grab his shoulders and look into his stupidly huge eyes and ask him to reject you so you can finally get over this. You want to scream what the fuck do you want from me? in his face over and over until you get an honest answer.

You do none of this. You stand there, despite the urge to go for his jugular beating at the back of your mind. He knows nothing about you. You’re irritated for no real reason. Neither of you speak, and you’re conscious of another line in the sand between the two of you. You’re well acquainted with boundaries. You’re the first one to cross it. “Go on then. Tell me you don’t want to see me anymore because you’re with her. Isn’t that what you came here for?”

He’s genuinely confused, and you feel bad for using him to quell your own rapidly growing hunger. There’s no way he can be honest, especially not after Reo told you, and Mikage Reo does not lie. His eyebrows furrow. “What? Why do you want me to tell you something that isn’t true?” You are frozen in place, one foot over the line. Was it destined to be like this?

You blink once, twice, three times, an owlish habit you subconsciously picked up somewhere a few months ago and collect yourself before responding. “But, Reo said…”

“I know what Reo said. It’s not true. Just some girl he wanted me to talk to.” He looks at you in a way that makes you think he’s disappointed in you for buying into Reo’s bullshit. “Not sure why you would think that. I went out with you all the time for the past couple months.”

Nagi Seishiro is blunt , and you consider the implications of his statement for a moment before responding. “You know, the girl he wants for you probably has much more to offer than me.” To admit this to both him and yourself with God as your witness is embarrassing and demeaning. You are cold, and you are dead, and you are possessive, and you want him to get out while he still can before the weight of your karma boomerangs back around for the both of you.

But you also want him to want you, baggage and all. You’re willingly making yourself transparent for him this time, so he won’t have to force it by holding up a light behind you like a paper bag with unknown contents. The studio burns down around you, and it is judgment day, your heart beating unabashedly on the table in front of Nagi Seishiro.

“You’re interesting. In a way that she isn’t.” He’s honest . You want to believe it. The facts align in your favor, because if the girl is anything like the sort of people Mikage Reo associates with, she likely has the brain capacity of a pigeon pea. But you’ve never once thought of yourself as interesting. You’ve never thought of yourself as anything except for arrogant, cold, and vapid. “But you can believe what you want. We don’t have to see each other anymore.” He finishes, and you recognize it as an offering. You’re not sure whether to take the other end of the olive branch, although your fingers twitch with the urge to enclose themselves around it.

You hadn’t expected to see him at all today. You hadn’t expected to see him ever again, but if you did, you would’ve ended things amiably to save yourself from any more pain, and to starve yourself some more in a twisted act of self deprivation. You had been entirely ready to leave the table with an empty stomach, pushing in your chair behind you and leaving with your tail tucked between your legs, a slight limp in your walk.

It’s not your fault, nor his. It just is. You no longer want it to be. Your heart is clawing at the inside of your chest every second you accept the love you think you deserve, which is none. He stands in front of you, definitely confused, maybe waiting for your response, as if he hadn’t entirely blindsided you with his eagerness to know more about the mess that was Setsuno [Name.]

You know what you should say, and it is not at all the same as what you want to say. Should you listen to your head? The same thing that pulled you from a lifetime of spiraling headfirst into the abyss until you reached your inevitable demise? What your gut is telling you to do is an absolutely horrible idea. Thus, you go with it. You feel yourself stepping over the edge, challenging your own fate. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, you don’t know, and you don’t care. He’ll catch you either way.

You answer by kissing him, rising in a way that is not unlike a relevé to meet his lips. There is no steady climbing of impatient hands. There is no feeling of being kissed by an insincere dog who tastes only the food on your lips. It’s just a kiss, nothing more, nothing less, and as he lazily kisses you back, the two of you blissfully unaware of your juniors staring and taking pictures, your heart twists in a way that is not entirely unpleasant and you know you’ve made the right choice.

You lower yourself down gently, and once your heels have touched the ground, he tilts his head at you, unphased, his hand coming to his mouth as if remembering the feel of your lips. “What does that mean?”

You laugh softly. “Whatever you want it to.” There’s a soft gasp from behind you, and you look to see Atsuko and two corps girls rush away into an open studio, eager to not be caught ogling the two of you. “Looks like we have an audience here.”

It’s November, and it’s freezing when he walks you out of the studio. Your thin sweater is not enough, and without him sparing it a second thought, the jacket he’s been wearing over his white hoodie is instantly draped over your shoulders. You look up at him, and instead of his gaze being fixed ahead, it is fixed on you. “You looked cold.”

“I was.” You respond. Your lips taste sweet. You want to stare at him for longer, but you have the feeling that he’s already leashed you tight enough. The clouds are rolling in with the evening, and the little amount of sunlight casts an ugly shade upon the city. Your eyes are drawn to the sky, and the bitterly cold wind whips at your cheeks and chaps your once-soft lips. “They say it’s going to snow tonight.”

He looks upward for the sole reason that you are as well. “Don’t like the snow. It’s a pain to shovel it out of the way.” You feel his eyes on you. His gaze is unreadable. Your good character is re-established within his gray eyes, and you are reinstated when he adds: “May not be so bad this time, though.”

You think this must be how it feels to be sent up the stairwell at the gates by Saint Peter, and you cannot change what the gods say is so. You take a deep breath, and you shiver. In the back of your mind, there is the beat of angel’s wings.

Somewhere between the crosswalk and Miura’s, your hands have brushed enough times for you to take his within yours. Despite the weather, his hand is warm, and it is large. He doesn’t say a word. It may be wishful thinking on your behalf, but you’re certain that for a moment, neither of you breathe, and you exhale at once, your warm breath creating a puff of condensation in the cold air.

It’s dark by the time you reach your front door. He kisses you, and it’s so unlike him that you are struck with the vision of his hands around your neck. He has you, so simply, with the promise to be no one else’s but yours. You wanted to know you possessed him, but you’re reminded that at the end of the day, your leash is wound around his oblivious finger.

It is late evening, and you have not yet eaten dinner. You’re smoking a blueberry cigarette on your balcony, Nagi’s jacket still draped around your shoulders. By now, you’ve practically melted into the ridiculously oversized garment, and taking it off would be akin to peeling off a layer of your skin. You make a mental note to wash it before returning it, not wanting it to smell like cigarette smoke when you eventually give it back to its rightful owner.

The night is beautiful, crushingly so. The stars are entirely invisible beneath the thick curtain of the clouds, and the dusk has a deep blue tint to it that serves as a backdrop to the meager view of Tokyo you receive from your window. You’re reminded of the view from the balcony at the Mikage residence, and you mentally compare what you saw on that blue evening when you hungered for something you didn’t even know the name of to what you see now when you’ve been mostly satiated. It’s worlds apart, and yourthoughts are drawn to your brother. If he could see you now, what would he say?

Would he be disappointed in you for throwing yourself into something that may not come true? Would he be proud of you for taking a chance? Would he laugh at you for how quickly you’re falling? It doesn’t take much deliberation for you to decide that the answer would be all three. You miss him more than anything on days like this, the days where you achieve rare victories in your numbingly small life. When he died, you vowed to not let your life get too fast for you. But this pace was comfortable, and it was good. For the first time in God knows how long, you felt good.

It hits you all at once, the way you truly feel. You like Nagi Seishiro. More than that, maybe, but you’re taking it one step at a time.

You taste the words on the tip of your tongue, syrupy sweet against the bitter taste of the tobacco. You must say them somehow, but you cannot say them to him. Not like this. Leaning over the edge of your balcony, with no one but God as your witness, you finally admit to yourself what you’ve known since the fateful seven. You are not guilty, and you are not afraid.

The snow starts soon after. You watch it inside from your window, your couch providing you front row seats to the sugar coated twilight. Tokyo is cold tonight, but for once you are not, and you’re thinking only of Nagi.

You have this curious sensation that you’re digging your own grave in the snow, and you cannot stop yourself from meeting your eventual fate. In your head, he’s holding the gun, and you’re turned around facing the hole in the ground, dug six feet deep and about the width of your body. He fires. The blizzard continues. God watches.

THEME SEVEN: LIVING WHILE STARVING

Your earliest memory of your mother is not love, nor indifference, but rejection. Your mother is crouching, back towards you as she fixes Masao’s hair. You are four, he is eight.

“That’s no good, Masao. You’ve got food on your face.” There’s a softness in her tone that you’ve longed to hear directed at you for the entirety of your existence. But by now, you know where you stand, and you know that your mother cannot love any creature so similar to herself.

So you watch your mothers back, and you force yourself not to care. You force it not to bruise. It will anyway, but it’s easier to delude yourself. Your battle lines are drawn before you even start primary school. You learn to lick your wounds, and you learn the art of apathy.

Even young, you were not oblivious to the way your mother hurt. Maybe it’s why you’re so lenient with her now, because you saw how that woman went through hell and back. You were there.

You saw her when she found a lacy bra, two cup sizes bigger than her own, in your father’s suitcase after a “big business trip.” You knew how her own father denounced her after she decided to marry your father.

You never covered your ears when they’d have their screaming matches, your mother’s shrill voice drowning out whatever your father was trying to say. Masao always climbed into your bed, shaking next to you with a pillow over his ears. You’d take his sweaty hand and squeeze it until he fell asleep, and you’d listen.

The next morning, when your father would leave early for work, you’d see the bruises on your mother’s wrist that she quickly hid by pulling down her long sleeves. Whenever she noticed you noticing these things, she would send you a weird glance that made you feel like it was all your fault somehow, like your existence had ruined her life.

Some days, you’d be on the swing set at the park, and as you swung higher and higher, your line of sight aligning with the tops of the trees and the clouds, you would get a vision of your mother and her true love and Masao. The man was never your father, nor did he ever have a set appearance, but she loved him and he loved her, and in your daydream they’d always cling to each other like they were the only thing that mattered. It mimicked the kind of spousal love that you’d see in the movies, because you had no other basis for it. Still, as young as you were, you knew you had no place in her utopia.

You could never tell Masao that you thought of these things. It would shatter his already fragile worldview. He was the older sibling, only by age, as you were the one who always had to do the babysitting, the one who safeguarded him from the cruel realities of the world. You had accepted long ago how your life was going to be— alone, neglected, hungry. You’d never once had anything of your own in the entirety of your existence. It wasn't anyone’s fault. It just was . But Masao was brimming with hope for how things and people would be.

How hard reality hit him should’ve been considered a crime.

Masao was 16 when he learned that the first betrayal always comes from family. He had just needed something from his fathers office. He hadn’t expected to find him in there with her. She was blonde, and gorgeous, and the antithesis of your mother.

At his funeral, your father told you through a voice thick with tears that your brother fell to his knees right then like a martyr.

You realized then that your father blamed himself for corrupting the view of his own beloved son. A part of you wanted to say good . He deserved to hurt. He deserved to feel the weight of his son's crippling absence for the rest of his life. He deserved to pay for his crimes.

But at the end of the day, your father was just a man, in the same sense that your mother was just a woman, and Masao was just a boy. Your father was not some sort of terrifying monster. In front of you, he was a sniveling, pale old man, his busty American girlfriend holding a black umbrella over him to shield him from the freezing rain.

As much as you wanted it to, seeing him in grief gave you no satisfaction. It made something inside you twist until you wanted to throw up all over his neatly tailored suit. You didn’t want to be a horrible person. You didn’t want to be cruel. You simply wanted to not care anymore, to not feel the crippling sadness and emptiness that would seep in if you let it.

You decided to keep your peace, walking away silently, suddenly aware of the bruises forming on the backs of your heels from those shitty, too-small shoes your mother made you wear.

In your grief, as you learned to cope with your loneliness in your own questionably healthy ways, you would often find yourself wishing that people had little clocks above their heads with the amount of time left until they took their last breath. You figured it would be helpful to know which conversations would be the last so you’d have time to plan out exactly what to say.

If you’d known that day of your sixteenth winter would be the last time that you saw Setsuno Masao alive, you would’ve been gentler. You would’ve let him daydream for a bit longer. You would’ve fixed him some warm milk like you always used to do and carefully analyze his problems, pulling and pointing out the issues like the slim wooden planks in the Jenga set that your father got for the two of you years ago. But Setsuno Masao was normal when he came to the door of the family home that day.

He had come home for the holidays, he said. It was barely December, but your mother was so happy to see him that she did not question his presence one bit. He offered to help her cook dinner, but due to his skill deficit, he was relocated to dish duty while you chopped up the ingredients for your mother to make her son’s favorite curry—- the kind you hated because of how spicy it was.

While you chopped vegetables in silence, the suffocating odor of the onion at the mercy of your knife bringing tears to your eyes, your mother interrogated Masao on how uni was going, receiving short, blunt answers in response. If she noticed anything off about her son, she said nothing. Your mother never knew how to get her head out of her own ass, and her curiosity was likely self-serving, wanting to feel like she had succeeded with at least one of her children. You slammed the knife on the cutting board a little harder than necessary and then went to wash your hands.

The only conversation you got to have alone with him that night was when you were walking him to the front door.“Hey, [Name.]”

You hummed in response.

His voice came out strained. “Remember the stuff you used to tell me, about the world being so beautiful, and how when we’d grow up we’d get to experience that?”

You did. It was one of the many lies that you’d told to your innocent older brother in order to shield him from the truth, likely whispered over a damp pillow while your parents screamed loud enough to wake the dead outside the room. You wanted him to grow up with some aspect of optimism, away from the tumultuous climate of your social climbing parents’ relationship.

“I don't think I do. It’s been a while” the lie came smoothly off your tongue as if rehearsed.

“Well, you used to say that.” He wrapped his red scarf around his neck with tentative hands. You noticed the slight tremor.

“Doesn’t sound like me at all,” You quickly backtracked after seeing his thinly veiled disappointment. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

He seemed to think for a moment. “All that amazing beautiful stuff in life. When does it start?” What were you supposed to respond with? For years, you’d mull over what the right response to him would be, never coming to an answer.

At that moment, you had said, “I don't know.” In the unsaid words, I don't know if it ever will. But to say that to the man in front of the door, the 18 year old boy who looked so small and beaten, would be like ending a life.

He gave you a small smile, one that you would have thought was sad if you didn’t know him better. “Me neither.” The two of you were silent for a few beats. You opened the front door. The cold air immediately rushed in, and while you stood in the warm doorway of the house, Masao shivered at the bottom of the front steps.

To avoid any surprises, the next words you spoke to him would be the last.

“Don’t be a stranger.” you said. As if it was possible for the apple of your mother’s eye, the only treasured child of the Setsuno family to be an outsider within these walls. The statement was laughable at best, because if anyone was the stranger, it was you.

Masao said nothing, and his face darkened in a way that you had never seen before. For a moment, you got the feeling that you had said something terribly wrong.

But he was back to normal in a moment, nodding weakly. “See you, [Name]”

He turned on his heel, and walked away, his feet crunching on the dead leaves discarded on the path like wilting rose petals. You watched him go with an odd sort of emptiness, any sense of foreboding entirely absent. Something in the back of your mind screamed at you to call out after him, to invite him back in to stay for dessert, to stay the night.

You deemed it unreasonable, and walked back into the gates of hell.

A few days after Christmas. your mother had heard nothing, and had received no response on the indulgent present that she’d bought Masao. He hadn’t spent the money that your father had transferred. The book he’d been eyeing that you bought for him was under your bed, gift wrapped with a little bow on top.

You were the only one who thought to check his apartment first. Your mother trailed behind you when you climbed the steps. Inside, it was stuffy despite the piles of snow outside. The TV was on, set to the lowest volume. You reached the bathroom first. You approached the bathtub. You did not scream, nor did you cry. You did not recount.

He looked like he was asleep. That was the lie you told yourself. He was sleeping in water diluted by his own blood.

He hadn’t planned on you being the one to find him. At least, you hoped that was the case. You hoped with every inch of your body, with every drop of the shared blood that ran through your veins that Setsuno Masao intended to simply melt into the bathwater so that no one had to find him. Not you, not your mother, god knows not your fucking father, wherever he was, holed up with some whore 20 years younger than your mother.

But at the end of the day, reality is cruel, and Setsuno Masao had made his choice. As you stood there looking over the bathtub, the water now brown because it had been so long since anyone had checked on him, you had to make yours.

For the subsequent week, you sobbed, and you heaved, and you threw shit around because it wasn’t fucking fair. Why the golden child, why the only one anyone ever loved? Why had the special one become so fucking disillusioned? How had you failed to protect him?

An odd sort of guilt made your head spin, and your tears turned to anger. You screamed in your mother’s face when she tried to pick fights with you, and relished in the way that her red tinted lips flattened before she spat the same amount of venom back at you.

“You are a bitter girl [Name]. Bitter and disgustingly cynical . No wonder your father didn’t want to deal with you.” You were both reeling from your father’s rejection and your brother's untimely departure. The fight was accompanied by angry tears brimming from both of your eyes, the line between anger and debilitating sadness dreadfully blurred.

Dinners without either of the buffers between mother and daughter often ended with one of you finding fault in something the other had done or how she’d handled things, and escalated in the worst of situations to a screaming match. What else could happen when a woman is placed in front of her younger mirror, whom she sees as daisy-fresh and not yet beaten down by the weight of the world?

You laughed drily, mockingly. “I'm bitter? Who the fuck do you think I learned that from? Although I'd be bitter too if my husband left me for a white whore who’s half my age.”

You had no time to react, for before you could even close your mouth, your mother’s hand had struck your face. It was not particularly painful, but she went for your jugular with her next words.

“You’ll see one day, [Name.] You’ll see how this world treats you. It is not kind to women, especially not those like you.” She pointed an accusatory finger at you, and the anger stopped. You had the feeling that when she said you, there was an unspoken us. For a moment, you felt bad for disappointing her, because in the end, you truly were the same.

The silence hung heavy between the two of you. One tear, two. She slammed her fist down on the table before getting up and walking away, leaving her chair pulled out. The trance broke the moment you were out of her presence, and you were livid, but also terrifyingly confused. You brought your hand up to the angry red mark that your mother had left, touching it gently in a way that no one had ever touched you before.

There might have been a bruise the next day. You don’t remember. Your mother did not speak to you, and you had no interest in speaking to her. You skipped dinner to make things easier on the both of you.

At the funeral, she was especially angry because you could not cry. What more was there to cry about? What more was there to say? He was here, and then he wasn’t. There was no changing the circumstances, and you had to speed run the stages of grief so as not to cause yourself any pain.

Your emotions had formed the rift between you and your mother, and you’d since realized that she was right. The world is not kind to those who wear their hearts on their sleeves, to those who are dying to possess what they’ve never had. Understanding how things worked was not the same as outsmarting them, but not caring nullified the consequence of anything.

That night the grief was palpable between you and your mother at the dinner table. Your father and his new wife had offered to stay over for dinner, but your mother had dismissed him not at all gently.

“We don't need your faux sympathy, you cheating bastard. My daughter and I will not take your charity.” You hated to admit it, but she was right.

You wanted nothing more than to spit in the face of the man who couldn’t bring himself to give a shit about his son until he was dead. But instead, you stood behind your mother like a little girl instead of a 16 year old almost-adult. How telling that you’d rather take the side of a woman you hated, the woman who gave you life, than the man who was supposed to love you, to teach you how men should be.

Despite your first efforts at indifference, the incident made you feel so small. You wanted your dolls, you wanted your stuffed animals, and you wanted your brother. You wanted to feel whole again. You wanted to feel needed. The urge to express this to your mother bubbled up in your throat. You suppressed it, putting down your eating utensils, and leaving the dinner table without a bite of food.

Around that time you began to smoke. The heavy feeling in your lungs momentarily repaired the hole in your chest that your brother's absence left, and you weren’t exactly a stickler for the health consequences. You’d steal cigarettes from the box in your mothers designer purse. Thinking back on it now, you are sure she noticed the amount dwindling, but she never once said anything about it.

There was a park not far from your house. On days when the suffocating emptiness of the third seat at the dinner table and the vacant guest bedroom became unbearable, you found yourself wandering aimlessly there, people watching and smoking a cigarette on the a bench. It was winter then, too, and you had outfitted yourself in two sweaters that hung much too loose on your frame and your brother's puffer jacket, as well as a pair of sweatpants and his winter boots.

Despite your intention of putting them on, you did not feel any closer to Masao. In fact, it made the fact that he was gone much more blatantly clear.

That evening, as you sat on the freezing park bench, it began to snow. It was a moonless night, and you watched as the Christmas lights on the trees and the buildings and the lampposts began to switch on, flickering one by one. The snow fell quietly, and the lights glimmered like the stars hidden behind the clouds and it all hit you at once because it was beautiful. The world was still so beautiful, the same world that could take away something that meant so much to you, and suddenly the lights began to blur. You hugged your legs to your body, the cold cutting through your thick layers like a knife as hot tears began to stream down your cheeks. Your shoulders shook against the icy metal and it was cold, so cold, and you were so hungry from weeks at picking at your dinner across from the closed off state of your mother.

That night taught you to hate winter. You eventually went home and your mother was asleep on the couch. Your house was warm and dark. The snow had stopped.

By the time you were 18, your mother had denounced you and your habits. She’d managed topull herself out of her funk one day, coincidentally not long after you moved out. She wouldn’t shut up about recovering in order to be a new version of herself, a version that was exactly who she had wanted to be. You tried not to let it hurt you too much that it was enough for her to get better for herself, but not for her daughter who had needed her more than ever.

Your father paid for your own apartment. You began to eat dinners by yourself, more often than not some instant noodles, your faulty kitchen light flickering above the small dining table that you refused to fix because you only used it while you ate dinner.

There was only one bedroom in your apartment, yet the emptiness resided permanently somewhere in your chest, and was exacerbated any time you would wear the oversized puffer jacket, or the winter boots.

You’d see his face in the snow, and the Christmas lights, and in the azure hour of the sunset as day turned to dusk. It was unfortunate, the way your reality had become a minefield of things that could send you into a spiral, how a stranger on the street who’s hairstyle, or face, or gait looked so familiar that you’d curl up on your rug in the fetal position and wait until the sound of his voice and the last words he said to you dissipated from your ears. Often, this would last through dinnertime, and your kitchen light would stay off as you suffered, empty-stomached, in the living room, Tokyo’s prying eyes watching on from beyond the big window behind your balcony.

You began to draw your shades before returning to ballet, packing your bag with water and a granola bar along with your shoes. Originally, you had picked it back up because it hurt in a way that the earthly pleasures you’d been indulging in hadn't.

The pain of substance abuse was instant, and although it would cause you immeasurable consequences in the long run, you hadn’t planned on sticking around long enough to find out. The pain from ballet was different. it was somehow both persistent and immediate, and it worked psychologically in a way that alcohol and nicotine did not. The years of staring into mirrors at your own distorted view of your body and your face and your technique came to a head once you returned with a body much less flexible than you’d left with.

More often than not, your kitchen light stayed off, intentionally this time.

You learned the meaning of ego, and managed to delude yourself with it to avoid making the same mistakes as your ill-fated brother. Masao was afraid of his own hubris. To your brother, pride was the greatest sin. You unabashedly committed sacrilege on the daily, staring into the mirrors all around you and declaring yourself your own fucking god.

You couldn’t give less of a shit about others, because you had more talent in your pinky than they had in their entire fucking body. Your thoughts easily turned violent, but no one mattered in the end, not even yourself. Delusion was easy, and Setsuno Masao never understood the concept of a desired reality once in his life.

You told yourself you were different. You were built to survive, and he couldn’t keep up. Despite sharing the same blood, the same DNA, you were invincible, whereas he cared too much. That was the first of many of his mistakes.

By the time you were 20, your brother's memory created a dull ache, provoking cruel thoughts about his own character, and his innate weakness. If he had been more like you, hardened by years of hunger and neglect, he wouldn’t have lost his way.

You liked to believe that the world had turned you cruel, but in the back of your mind, you knew that if Masao had known the blur of Christmas lights, felt the biting cold, tasted the salty tears on his cheeks, if he had known how beautiful things could be, he would have made it. Your subconscious was certain of that fact.

And you were not as cold as you pretended to be. Below your apathetic exterior lay a 16 year old in an oversized puffer jacket with her knees pulled into her chest. Nothing more, nothing less.

You stare at yourself in the cafe window. Today is still cold, but spring approaches inevitably, and the breeze that ruffles your rust-colored hair carries the promise of impending warmth. You’re not sure how long you’ve been examining yourself, picking up the puzzle pieces of your past and putting them back together one by one, but by the time you look back at the empty seat in front of you, your once-scorching coffee is merely lukewarm. You hope the one across from you has not suffered the same fate. She hates stale coffee.

And as if summoned by some shitty faux-satanic ritual, she appears. You smell her knockoff designer perfume before you see her, hear the jingle of the zipper and the Louis Vuitton charm on her purse before you meet her eyes, shaded by expensive sunglasses that she’s had for at least half of your lifetime.

“[Name.]” she does not spare you a hello. You’re not surprised by such a terse greeting after so many years apart.

“Mother.”

THEME EIGHT: PAS DE DEUX WALTZ

“You’re late.” It’s a futile criticism, but a valid one, nonetheless. Your mother has never been known to be on time, but a heads up from her, or some sort of warning would’ve been nice.

Your mother pushes her sunglasses to the crown of her head, and stares at you with tired, forest green eyes. It is not unlike looking into a mirror.

Her mouth twists in a way that you are uncomfortably used to. “I got caught up in traffic. Serves me right for driving in the city.” Your mother hates taking the train, something about it being too cramped and unsanitary, and the feeling of not having control of when you reach your destination. You hate women like her, because after years of living in the city, she still thinks she is too good for everything.

She sits down across from you, and you are wondering what she wants, what her reason for showing up is. You are not entirely sure of your reason for inviting her, but something reasonable in your chest wanted you to make amends. Absolving her entirely is off the table. You are not holy, nor do you hold the power to forgive. You can’t help but think that you’ve invited her here as a sort of second funeral. This time, you both will step into the casket while holding hands.

You had mulled over the decision by yourself, and with your boyfriend, who you were briefly attempting long distance with as he and his teammates played an away game in South Korea. Seishiro had, unsurprisingly, taken a neutral stance, but somehow had given you the final push to call your mother during a late night phone call. “If it’s what you feel like you need to do, then you should do it. You’re going to keep thinking about it until it happens anyway.” It was true, in a frustratingly simple way.

You can’t help yourself from wishing he was here in order to take the vacant third spot of the buffer between you and your mother, but you would not force him into the spot of your father, nor would you allow your mother to think of him as her son. In fact, you wanted the woman who destroys everything she touches as far away from your relationship as possible. You needed to finally face her as yourself, to let her hate the pieces of herself that had formed you.

In the arms of your boyfriend, you are finally satiated, and he knows who you truly are, and you know him. No matter what your mother could say to him about how wretched you are, he already knows, for he is the same. There is no way to get what you want by being nice nor holy, no matter how much the angels try to convince you it is so.

She looks at you with heaviness in her eyes, and it is not love, no matter how much you used to delude yourself into thinking it was. “How have you been?”

“I’m fine, mother. What about you?” You feel sixteen years old again, bitter, empty.

She exhales derisively through her nose. “Been better.” She takes a sip of the coffee before making a face, wiping her mouth with a napkin. You try to look away from the disgusting stain that her cheap lipstick has left on the rim of the cup. “This is cold.”

“It would’ve been hot if you were on time.” You’re stepping into passive aggressive territory now. She blinks at you through tattooed eyeliner eyes, and you take notice of the wrinkles on her forehead and below her eyes, looking at who you are destined to become.

“I suppose you’re right.” She takes another sip, as if resigning herself to her fate.Three seconds of silence. You sense the presence of something unasked in the air. Before you can repeat the rhythmic count, she speaks. “Have you heard from your father?”

“Not recently.” You conveniently keep from her the fact that he had instructed you to go to the Mikage’s in his stead, and as a result, you had met the only sane person in your life as of right now.

She hums disapprovingly. You do not feel bad for your dishonesty.

“How are things on the romance front?” She asks, feigning the endearing nosiness of a curious mother. You know better. She wants to know if you’ve been hurt by men in the same way that she has, if you’ve suffered.

If her assumption is correct, she’ll take the information to heart with pleasure and a little bit of maternal guilt that you’ve carried the same cross that your sex has been forced to bear. Normally you wouldn’t entertain her, but for once, you have someone to talk about, and you’d take every excuse even in his absence to show him off.

“I’m seeing someone.” You take a sip of barely warm coffee. Your mother sets hers down in a thinly veiled action of surprise.

“And who is that?” She arches a thinly plucked eyebrow.

“He’s a footballer. Nagi Seishiro. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” The way her jaw tenses tells you that she has.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” She looks around suspiciously, as if any minute your white-haired boyfriend would appear from behind the building, proving his existence and extinguishing her reasonable doubt. “And where is this Nagi?”

“He’s with his team in Seoul. They’re playing Jeonbuk.” Her stare is blank. “The top football club in South Korea.”

“I’m familiar,” She cuts you off. “Your father was a huge football fan.” You hadn’t forgotten.

Now, when did every conversation between the two of you turn into a competition? You’re consciously trying to one-up your creator with the successes of your own life. And for what? It doesn’t give you any satisfaction. And the wretched woman, with all her criticism, doesn’t seem to be enjoying this either, because her eyes are so, so sad. You wonder if you look the same. You make a mental note to ask your boyfriend upon his return.

His absence was a sensitive spot for you. For years, you had settled into the routine of solitude, but Nagi Seishiro had gotten under your skin and provoked a quick change in the plans of your foreseeable future. Tokyo Kaisen had departed for Korea shortly after the development of your relationship, and being alone had given you much more time to think.

And, unfortunately, had provoked you to contact the woman sitting across from you.

Even while you are actively in her presence, you are not sure why you did it. Maybe you wanted to brag about where you were in life, somewhere she could only dream of. You were working hard at rehearsals for your spring performance of which you had a solo, you were madly in love with your professional footballer boyfriend, and you were free .

Your mother had never experienced free choice, the limitless opportunities that are offered to a woman who knows where she stands. Even now, as a single woman, she is still tethered to the memory of your father, and your brother, and even to you.

You look back at her, and she is staring off at something behind you. “Something wrong with my hair?”

Her eyes swivel back to you in an almost dreamlike fashion. “I was just thinking,” There is a notable absence of apology. “About your brother.”

In an instant, you are mad. Your mother continually turns the knife in her own abdomen, exacerbating the wounds that Masao’s death left behind. Your own bruises have just begun to fade, and at once you find her disgusting in the way that only a grieving woman can be.

“What more is there to think about?” She is stunned. She opens her mouth, but doesn’t say anything, silently pushing you to continue. “He’s gone.”

Her eyes become misty, and she looks down at her lap, as if recalling some far-off memory. “He could’ve done great things. He was always so smart, so mature.” Her gaze is icy when it returns to you. “He was sensitive in a way that you never knew how to be.”

“But I am alive.” The words come out before you can stop them. They are cruel, and they are empty, but they are true. Your mother’s mouth closes like a suffocating fish, then twists in the way that it does when she is trying not to cry.

“Who made you this cold? Your father? His bitch of a wife?” She refuses to take the blame, as always pushing herself into the role of the victim. A voice in the back of your mind tells you to leave her there and walk as far away as possible, to keep your peace before you can say anything more to hurt her. You deem it unreasonable.

“It was you, mother.” The first time that you have ever said those words aloud is to the face of the woman. At once, you are her judge, jury, and executioner. Her fear is palpable. This is the revenge of a scorned daughter, and her creator is coming to a realization before her eyes.

“That can’t be true.” A nervous, disbelieving smile crosses her face as she brushes you off.

“I needed you.” There is a slight tremor to your voice. You are tired of being strong. “I needed you, but he was all you could think about.”

“He was my son.” Her only response. Her chest heaves. “You don’t have a child. You don’t understand.”

“I am your child too. And I loved him. I needed someone to support me. You did nothing.” Fact after cursed fact. You feel yourself tearing down the woman in front of you. Unlike how you felt when speaking to your father, an ever-present guilt presses at the front of your chest. “Even when he was alive, it was this way. You rejected me like I was not yours.”

“It’s not the same. You were never–” She cuts herself off, pauses. She keeps the peace for a moment before entirely shattering it. “You never showed his promise. You were not a part of me like he was. You can’t blame me for making the decision that I did.”

She is right. Your mother has ripped your insides out and left them on the patio table between you. Your heart beats in threes, and you bleed.

You sit, miles apart, watching the older version of you fiddle with her hands, and bite her red lips as her eyes brim with the tears that you feel at the back of your throat. All at once, you want to apologize. You want to make her proud. You want to be who she wanted to be at 20. You want to live the life she was never allowed to live so she can watch on and tell you she loves you.

You want her to tell you that she loves you. This conclusion knocks all of the air out of your lungs.

You look down at the table. Through the small carved metal holes, you can see ants marching in a line on the concrete, flocking around a drop of coffee that you must have spilled. You crush them under his winter boots. When you look up, you are crying.

“Mom,” It is the first time in God knows how long that you have referred to this woman as such. The woman who carried you within her for 9 months was never your mom . She was your mother, your creator, the one who bore you from her blood. For the first and the last time, she is your mom. “I’m happy.”

It is true, despite what she has said to you, and despite what happened to your brother, and despite what your father let happen to your family. Because, at home, your kitchen light is on, the breeze promises spring, and your boyfriend will be home soon, and you will retreat, because nothing else matters.

The woman in front of you has told you what you needed to hear for 20 years. In her own voice, she has told you to stop searching for approval that will never come. Your final betrayal has arrived, and you are better for it.

She swallows heavily. “Good for you.” It is meaningless, and you both know it. You give her the benefit of the doubt, because she has suffered. It is not an excuse, but it is an explanation, and nothing between you is fair. One, two, three. You count, and the silence is maintained.

In one afternoon, you both have redrawn the lines between you, and crossed them many times over. You ensure that this time will be the last. The war has ended, and you vacate the battlefield. “Thank you for meeting me here today.”

She spares you a nod, looking down at her well manicured fingers that are fidgeting in her lap. The guilt is gone. You got what you came for. You never want to see her again, and if you don’t leave now, you will be late to meet Seishiro at the airport.

You arrive at Tokyo International an hour before the flight is scheduled to land.

You do not think of your conversation with your mother. You are not hers anymore, and she was never yours. You get yourself something to eat for lunch, and pick at it for a bit before realizing its futility and saving it for your boyfriend, who likely wouldn’t eat it either.

You’re watching the baggage claim spin in circles, transfixed when someone calls your name. You turn around, trance effectively interrupted. Mikage Reo stands a few feet behind you, accompanied by Chigiri and another man that you don’t recognize. You thank your lucky stars that he is not Shidou, because if you saw that man today, even in your present near-catatonic state, you would untie his shoelaces and then push him down the escalator.

“There you are, Setsuno. Nagi went all the way down there to find you because he thought you had the wrong baggage claim.” He gestures in the direction far off down the hallway. You don’t follow.

You checked your texts, and sure enough, Seishiro had sent you the wrong place to meet. You, in all your haste, had fortunately read the message wrong, and went to the right place, effectively delaying your reunion with your boyfriend. You resisted the urge to tear out your hair. Whatever deity that resided above you clearly was not on your side today. Or ever, for that matter.

“You’re Setsuno.” The unknown man said, as if he had met a celebrity. “I would say nice to meet you, but it feels like I know you already.”

You gave him a scrutinizing look. Already, you didn’t like him. He had too much energy, and you didn’t like his bangs. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Nagi wouldn’t shut up about you the whole time.” He laughed. “That guy barely talks to me, but when he wasn’t complaining about something stupid, he was going on about you.”

“Bachira, shut it. You’re gonna boost her ego.” Reo said, gently pushing Bachira on the shoulder. “Just be careful, Setsuno. That guy has a tendency to drop anything when it doesn’t interest him any longer.”

The words don’t sting, because you are the only one who knows how your boyfriend truly feels about you. You glare at Reo, and your silence is a much better response than any sort of yelling. You count three seconds, then repeat.

“Stop being a dick, Reo. We know it’s the only thing you’re good at.” Bachira effectively breaks the silence, and you decide that you don’t entirely hate him.

Reo backtracks with a small laugh of his own. “Come on. She knows I’m joking. Bachira’s right though. I was surprised, but I’m glad that you guys are happy.”

Your gaze drifted to Chigiri, who nodded slightly. “The guy really likes you. It’s annoying.”

Your heart stopped beating for a moment, before resuming at a new rhythm. One, two, three, then repeat. You smile.

Mikage Reo still does not like you. The distaste is mutual, but you’d like to think a begrudging respect has been born between the two of you.

As if He has heard your silent wishes, the deity above sends you Nagi Seishiro. He shuffles in behind his purple-haired friend, his gaze fixed on his phone. When he sees you, his mouth falls open. “[Name.]”

You run over to him, immediately forgetting the suffocating presence of his teammates. “Seishiro.” You hug him, folding into his body and breathing in as he pats your back gently. “Where’s my souvenir?”

“It’s in my bag,” He gestures to the baggage carousel. “You gotta be patient.” You follow him to the revolving contraption. As you stare at his back, the words that you cannot say bubble up in your throat, their presence so suffocating that you almost begin to dry heave.

Instead, you take his arm gently, watching as the bags go around, and around. The machine whirs away. Seishiro gets his bag. You count your footsteps in threes, a silent, solo waltz. One, two, three, then repeat. He does not notice your silence. You are biting your tongue because if you do not, you will betray your own confidence.

Your souvenir is a little polar bear plushie with Seoul written on its belly. You kiss it on the head, leaving a small smear of lipstick on the plush white fur. You don’t move to wipe it off, and Seishiro simply shakes his head.

You think of cheap lipstick on the lid of a lukewarm coffee cup. You push the thought away, and take your boyfriend’s hand.

The plushie is set up on your console table right in front of the TV, which is playing some newly released movie. You are curled into his side, arms wrapped around his body, your face just inches below his chin. He’s playing with your hair so absentmindedly that you’re not even sure he knows he’s doing it. It feels nice, so you leave it alone. Honesty rises up in your chest.

“I saw my mother today.” Your voice is quiet. You almost hope he does not hear you.

He hums in response. “How did that go?”

“The worst that it possibly could.” He looks down at you with concern, but you are still smiling. “I am not her child.”

He blinks down at you with large eyes. “Are you upset?”

You consider what you told your mother earlier. Now… “No. I’m happy.”

He seems to think for a moment, fingers scratching your scalp. “I am, too.”

You want to give him some sort of clever, witty response. Or maybe not respond at all. It doesn’t matter, it would all be a lie anyway.

Because you really want to tell him that every day he was gone felt like it stretched on impossibly long. You want to tell him that you dreamed about him, about holding his face so gently with your hands and forcing him to look at you. You want to tell him that every second that you are not honest with him about how you feel, the words expand in your chest until you feel close to exploding. He mindlessly tucks an auburn strand behind your ear and you melt.

He pulls back, leaning down to kiss your forehead gently, and you’re not sure what you’ve done to him. Your hand slides up the back of his neck, finding his hair and pulling him down until his face is inches from yours. “I missed you a lot.”

“I missed you, too.” He breathes. Nagi Seishiro is soft-spoken, but you relish in his attention. You lean up to kiss him, and it is sweet. The movie plays in the background. You curl up back into his side. The window is open, and God watches, but He does not mock you. Even though it is spring, you are still buried in the snow, bleeding out of the back of your head, and Nagi Seishiro holds the gun. This time, it feels good.

One, two, three. He is kissing your neck, and you close your eyes.

You wake with the warm breeze coming in from your cracked window. You are lying on the couch, and with your eyes still closed, you come to the conclusion that you forgot to shut it after going out to smoke. You quickly realize that you are not alone, and beneath you, you feel Nagi Seishiro sleep-breathing, slow, steady. You count the space between his breaths in threes. You don’t keep track of the amount of repeats, but you have never been more infatuated than you are at this moment.

You sit up, slowly untangling your limbs from his. The TV is still playing at a low volume, and you shut it off before approaching the sliding door to your balcony, and pushing it open with a shaky hand.

You do not need a cigarette to calm your tremor. You need to be outside for a moment, to assess your life, to assess what you did to deserve being this content. Your mother had denounced you. You were no longer her child. The pain gifted you with this unfamiliar sense of freedom.

The sun rises above Tokyo, the dawn hazy with the morning dew that resides above the freezing point. The birds chirp, and the people move below like little ants, leaving to go to work, or school, or practice. Seishiro stirs inside as you fold your arms over the damp railing and lean over them, looking at the view below. “[Name]”

You do not turn around, transfixed by the rhythm of the city. Has it always been this beautiful? On the hard mornings when you were rendered immobile on your rug by a debilitating sort of sadness, did the world just move on like nothing happened? While you shivered in your own bed, the people below were falling in love, getting their dream jobs, and graduating school. This happiness that you feel now, you could’ve experienced so much earlier if you only knew the way things truly were.

You think of your older brother with envy, because now you could see things through his eyes.

Seishiro shuffles up behind you, sleepily wrapping his arms around you and resting his head upon yours. “Why’re you out here? It’s early.”

“Just enjoying the view.” There’s a small smile on your lips. For the first time, your older brother’s memory has brought you happiness. He did not live in order for you to scorn him, and he did not die so you could revere him. He was gone, and you were tired of pressing on healed bruises and trying to get them to hurt. The taste of pain had left you retching, and now that you had tasted sweetness, you did not plan on going back to the way you used to be.

For a while, you were not better than your mother, stubbornly refusing to move on, your winter boots trapped in the frozen mud. But you will be, because you are not alone. You will not make the same mistakes. What else is a mother’s existence for, if not to teach her daughter how to become, whether through good or bad example?

Seishiro half hums, half groans. “Wanna go to Miura’s later? I’m out of cactus feed.”

You turn to look at him. “Already? Choki’s been really hungry lately.”

“I know. It’s a pain.” You laugh. One, two, three beats of silence. You are going to get better. You turn to hug your boyfriend, pressing your face into his chest until you can hear his heartbeat.

It is late spring, and you are giving everything you have left to give in your waltz. One two three, and again, you turn, welcoming the swell of the orchestra and its perpetual recount. It’s beautiful. On stage, you are beautiful.

Nagi Seishiro is in the audience, and he is not famous, he is yours. Photos will be taken, and tomorrow, the tabloids will be questioning why he is at the ballet, and why he is with you , but right now, the lights are dim, and you are floating across the stage like it’s what you were made for.

He pushes the flowers into your hands as you leave the theater, a bouquet of white roses. “You looked really pretty up there.” You take them tentatively, and sneak a glance at him. He seems a bit unsure on how to compliment your performance. You surprise him with a hug, pressing the flowers against his back.

“Thank you for coming.” He’s stunned, but he hugs you back eagerly. You pull back, looking into his eyes, and the humid breeze is so warm that you feel whole. The clouds roll overhead, but you are where you’re supposed to be, in his oversized sweater and your tights and leg warmers. You can’t help feeling like everything you’ve been through has been for this moment.

And at once, you realize that you are better. Your body is scarred all over, marred by the evidence of your suffering, and he loves you anyway, the sort of love that tends to all wounds. You look up at the overcast sky, and you welcome the storm.

You take a bow. The lights dim. All bruises heal in the end.

#nagi seishiro x you #nagi seishiro x reader #nagi x reader #nagi x you #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #bllk x you

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